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COLLEGE DAYS 
AT GEORGETOWN 



College ®a50 
at (Seorgetoton 

AND OTHER PAPERS 



BY 

/ 

J. FAIRFAX McLaughlin, ll.d. 



ILLUSTRATED 
4 




PHILADELPHIA 

^tesis of J. 3U, Hippincott ffinmpang 

MDCCCXCIX 



.^ 



38420 

Copyright, 1899 



J. Fairfax McLaughlin 



i\N0C0P\t-hi weceivEO. 






'> 






JUN2ai899 








CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Chronological List of Presidents of the College . 9 
Introduction 11 

CHAPTER I 
The Jesuit Pioneers of English America 17 

CHAPTER n 

Legal Status of Maryland Jesuits during Days of their 
Suppression ^2 

CHAPTER HI 

Peaceful Settlement of Early Disputes — The College 
firmly established 63 

CHAPTER IV 

Reminiscences of the Era of Dr. Ryder, the Pride of -^^^ 

the Maryland Province 83 

CHAPTER V 
Recollections of the Class-Room — The Two Mulledys 116 

CHAPTER VI 

Father William F. Clarke — His Graphic Letters in Re- 
lation to the College 134 

5 



/ 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

Father Robert Fulton — Extracts from his Letters — New 
York Alumni — Father McElroy ......... 150 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Gastons — Father George Fenwick — Fathers Ma- 
guire and Early — Charles B. Kenny's ** Taurea Fuga" 
— Robert Y. Brown — College Days before the War . 171 

CHAPTER IX 

Harvey Bawtree — Father E. H. Welch — Longfellow — 
Centennial of College — President Cleveland's Speech 
— Woodstock Scholasticate — End 196 

APPENDIX 

Charles A. Dana on Georgetown University — John 
Gilmary Shea on " The Ratio Studiorum" 219 

List of Subscribers 227 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

/^ PAGE 

Georgetown University Frontispiece 

Sir George Calvert 26 

I' Archbi'^'-iop John Carroll 81 

Dr. James Ryder, SJ 108 

y J. Fairfax McLaughlin 196 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRESIDENTS OF 
THE COLLEGE 

• 

[R. D., i.e.y Reverendus Dominus. R. P., i.e.y Reveren- 

Dus Pater.] 

R. D. Robertus Plunkett a. i Oct. 1791. 

R. D. Robertus Molineux a. 14 Junii, 1793. 

R. D. LuDov. Dubourg a. I Oct. 1796. 

R. D. Leonard Neale a. 30 Mart. 1799. 

R. P. Robertus Molineux a. i Oct. 1806. 

R. D. GuLiEL. Matthews a. 10 Dec. 1808. 

R. P. Francise Neale a. 1 1 Dec. 18 10. 

R. P. Joannes A. Grassi a. i Oct. 1812. 

R. P. Bened. Fenwick a. 31 Jul. 1817. 

R. P. Anton. Kohlmann a. i Oct. 1818. 

R. P. Enoch Fenwick a. 16 Sept. 1820. 

R. P. Bened. Fenwick a. 15 Sept. 1822. 

R. P. Steph. L. Dubuisson a. 9 Sept. 1825. 

R. P. Guliel. Feiner .a. 8 JuL 1826. 

R. P. Joannes G. Berchter a. 31 Mart. 1829. 

R. P. Thom. F. Mulledy a. 14 Sept. 1829. 

R. P. Guliel. McSherry a. 25 Dec. 1837. 

R. P. Josephus a. Lopez a. i Jan. 1840. 

R. P. Jacobus Ryder, V. R a. i Maii, 1840. 

R. P. Jacobus Ryder a. 17 Sept. 1843. 

R. P. Samuel A. Mulledy a. 10 Jan. 1845. 

R. P. Thom. F. Mulledy a. 6 Sept. 1845. 

R. P. Jacobus Ryder a. 6 Aug. 1848. 

R. P. Carolus H. Stonestreet . . . a. i Aug. 185 1. 

R. P. Bernardus Maguire a. 15 Aug. 1852. 

9 



LIST OF PRESIDENTS 

R. P. Joannes Early a. 4 Oct. 1858. 

R. P. Bernardus Maguire a. I Jan. 1866. 

R. P. Joannes Early a. 14 Jul. 1870. 

R. P. P. F. Healy, V. R a. 23 Maii, 1873. 

R. P. P. F. Healy a. 31 Jul. 1874. 

R. P. Jacobus A. Doonan, V. R. . . . a. 25 Jan. 1882. 

R. P. Jacobus A. Doonan a. 17 Aug. 1882. 

R. P. J. Havens Richards a. 15 Aug. 1888, 

R. P. Joannes D. Whitney a. 3 Jul. 1898. 



10 



INTRODUCTION 

A HALF promise to one of the Jesuit 
Fathers, made without hesitation, but 
perhaps not without rashness, is mainly 
responsible for bringing to light the following 
pages. Undertaken merely as reminiscences of 
the days of my own student life at Georgetown, 
I had no sooner begun to write before the plan 
widened into a sketch of the College. But such 
a sketch required historical research and exceeding 
care, and imposed upon me rigid scrutiny of the 
little-understood legal status of the ex-Jesuits in 
Maryland and the District of Columbia during 
the years of the suppression. Two or three chap- 
ters, consequently, had to be indited before I could 
get down to the task proper which I had set for 
myself, of personal recollections of college days 
from 1851 to 1862. 

In my earlier years I was acquamted with several 
old Jesuits, such as Fathers McElroy, Fenwick, and 
Stonestreet, who had made a thorough study of 
everything connected with the history of the Col- 
lege, and from them I derived much information on 

the subject. The mind of one of those gentlemen 

II 



INTRODUCTION 

was a sort of chronological map and Noah's ark, not 
only of every important place and fact and person 
in the annals of the College, but in those of the 
State and Colony of Maryland from the beginning. 
The Jesuits came in the first expedition of Calvert, 
and Father Fenwick could tell you about them all, 
and their vicissitudes from St. Inigoes to George- 
town, — their trials, sufferings, and final triumph, 
whereby they made Maryland the Land of the 
Sanctuary, and, greater still, they made their mis- 
sion the corner-stone of the solid edifice of the 
Catholic Church in the United States. The his- 
tory of the Jesuits in colonial Maryland has not 
yet been written, but the lost chapter, I am happy 
to learn, may yet be rescued from the moth and 
rust of time, and even now, by research in Europe 
and America, is in course of systematic preparation. 
He who examines the earliest landmarks of 
Catholic colonization in North America must be 
struck by the singular influence of opposite causes 
in promoting and retarding its growth. Catholic 
navigators were the first explorers of the rocky 
shores and primeval forests of New England. Car- 
tier and Champlain, with the Franciscans and Jes- 
uits, planted the lilies of France within the present 
northeastern boundaries of the United States many 
years before the arrival of the Puritans at Plymouth 
Rock. The Catholic names of rivers and lakes 
sufficiently denote the religion of the discoverers 

12 



INTRODUCTION 

who first adventured into those northerly regions. 
Leaving out of view the Spanish settlements to the 
southward, the last vestiges of which were swept 
away in the recent Spanish-American war, among 
the rival European nations contending for domin- 
ion in the New World, France was the first to 
reach that precise point on the Atlantic coast which 
afforded the only practicable entrance to the vast 
interior portion of the most important division of 
North America. But the explorations of Cartier 
and Champlain proved but a stage and resting- 
place in the march of French discoveries. Within 
fifty years from the time of the arrival of the first 
settlers from Europe, those fearless pioneers, the 
French Jesuit missionaries, had discovered the 
sources of the Mississippi, explored its principal 
branches, and taken their daring way down the 
channel of the mighty river itself to where it 
empties its resistless tide into the Gulf of Mexico. 
Before the close of the seventeenth century a con- 
tinuous chain of French posts and missionary 
establishments extended over a vast empire, — from 
the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the 
Mississippi. AUouez, Joliet, Marquette, and La 
Salle were the first European pioneers of the West, 
and, although mighty cities and States have grown 
up in the regions first trodden by those daring 
Catholic explorers, two of whom were Jesuit mis- 
sionaries, and the sceptre has passed to another 

13 



^ INTRODUCTION 

race, their names are imperishably connected with 
the country as its discoverers. One of them was 
the first white man that ever reached the Father of 
the Lakes, another discovered the sources of the 
Mississippi, while still another completed the work 
by reaching its mouth, and, being shipwrecked on 
the shores of Texas, settled there and made Texas 
a French discovery and " a part of Louisiana." 

This is not the place to inquire into the causes 
of the overthrow of New France, or the triumph 
of the Pilgrim Fathers who came to Maryland on 
the Ark and the Dove. French colonization, al- 
though it ended in failure, furnishes the most 
splendid story of Christian heroism since the days 
of the Apostles. But the modest Jesuit mission 
in Maryland took root, and through tribulation 
and feeble beginnings became the germ of the 
American Catholic Church of to-day. George 
Calvert was as far in advance of his age as Shake- 
speare himself His Charter received not its full 
interpretation until the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, nor the Toleration Act of 1649 ^^^ flower 
of maturity until the passage of the Virginia 
Statute of Religious Freedom in 1785. The 
torch of faith, though quenched in the blood of 
Brebeuf, Jogues, Rasle, and other Jesuit martyrs 
in the North and West, was kept alive in the 
South by White, Copley, Altham, and their suc- 
cessors. Shall I say, certainly I am unable to 

14 



COLLEGE DAYS 
AT GEORGETOWN 

CHAPTER I 

THE JESUIT PIONEERS OF ENGLISH AMERICA 

THE cradle of Georgetown University was 
the Indian school taught by Father An- 
drew White, S.J., at St. Mary's City, 
Maryland, in 1634, several years before the found- 
ing of Harvard by the Puritans. This was the 
year of the landing of the Ark and the Dove at St. 
Mary's under Leonard Calvert, brother of Cecilius, 
the second Lord Baltimore.* Father White, 
founder of a new spiritual empire in this country, 
out of which has grown the Catholic Church in 
the United States, planted the first seeds of the 
present flourishing institution at Georgetown when 
he translated into the Indian tongue a grammar, 
dictionary, and catechism for use among his neo- 
phytes of the Yaocomoco tribe of St. Mary's. 
He not only taught and converted Indians, but he 

* During the voyage out "two Catholics, Nicholas Fairfax 
and James Barefoot, died." — Relatio Itineris. 

17 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

tells us in his " Relatio Itineris" that in addition to 
hundreds of the natives, nearly all the Protestants 
who had come out in the first expedition, as well 
as some settlers from Virginia who found their 
way across the Potomac to St. Mary's, were con- 
verted to the Catholic faith. 

The generally received opinion is that only two 
priests. White and Altham, accompanied the first 
Pilgrims to Maryland, but Archbishop Carroll, in 
his " Narrative of the Establishment of the Cath- 
olic Religion in Maryland and Pennsylvania,," 
mentions others ; and Bishop Benedict J. Fenwick, 
in his " Brief Account of the Settlement of Mary- 
land, with a Notice of St. Inigoes," speaks of sev- 
eral Fathers or Lay Brothers in addition to White 
and Altham. When these two accounts were 
written, certainly the former of them, the " Relatio 
Itineris" had not yet been discovered at Rome by 
Father McSherry. Father White's statement, that 
two Jesuits, himself and Father Altham, sailed on 
the Ark and the Dove, would settle the question of 
the exact number, if silence dictated by persecu- 
tion had not made it a rule of that age to keep the 
names of Catholic priests as much in the back- 
ground as possible. 

In a notice of Father White in the first volume 
of the " Woodstock Letters" it is stated that Ce- 
cilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, applied to 
Father Blount, first Jesuit Provincial of the Eng- 

iS 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lish Province, and to the General of the order 2^ 
Rome, Father Mutius Vitelleschi, for some mem- 
bers of the Society to go out in the first expedition 
in order " to attend the Catholic planters and set- 
tlers, and to convert the native Indians." That 
the number sent exceeded two is probable, as 
Kilty, in his " Landholder's Assistant," pp. 66-68, 
says that Thomas Copley, known on the mission 
as Father Philip Fisher, took up lands, claiming 
that Fathers White, Altham, and their companions 
had been sent over by him. 

In fine contempt of human glory tney obliterated 
themselves under aliases, and were mindful only 
of the work of the missions. In tracing them out 
with difBculty for his " Collections," Rev. Dr. 
George Oliver says, their " names are written in 
the book of Eternal Life ;" and Mr. Henry Foley 
with extraordinary industry gathered in his 
" Records of the English Province," especially 
in that part of it relating to Maryland, the many 
assumed and real names of the missionaries whose 
only concern was " the greater glory of God." 
His book is the recognized key by which the 
self-effacement of the early Maryland Jesuits may 
be partially deciphered for purposes of identifica- 
tion. 

A statue of Andrew White, the pioneer, whose 
catechism, dictionary, and grammar furnished the 
primal weapons of church and school in English 

19 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

America, should rise at Georgetown College. He 
was the first founder. The title-deeds of the Uni- 
versity begin with him. From the hour of its 
inception the school was always under Jesuit 
auspices. It started at St. Mary's in 1 634 ; passed 
to Calverton Manor under Father Thomas Cop- 
ley, alias Philip Fisher, and Mr. Ralph Crouch in 
1640 ; to Newtown Manor under Father Michael 
Forster and Brother Thomas Hothersall, alias Slater, 
an Approved Scholastic, about 1677 ; to Bohemia 
Manor, probably under Father Thomas Poulton, 
about 1 745 ; * to Georgetown Heights under the 
auspices of Father John Carroll in 1789. The 
hope of erecting the school into a college was en- 
tertained even from the beginning, when Fathers 
White and Poulton ascended the Potomac to Pis- 
cataway, and went from Kittamaquindi to the wig- 
wams of the Anacostans, a few miles farther up the 
river. The Anacostan tribe inhabited the region 
now known to the whole world as the District of 
Columbia. Father Ferdinand Poulton, alias Brock, 
in 1638 wrote to the Jesuit Provincial in England 
asking leave to establish a college in Maryland. 
The Provincial, Very Rev. Edward Knott, S.J., 



* United States Catholic Historical Magazine, vol. i. p. 71. 
Some Early Catholic Grammar Schools, by Rev. William 
P. Treacy. Dr. J. G. Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial 
Days, p. 404. 

20 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

answered this application in 1640, and said, " The 
hope of establishing a college which you hold 
forth, I embrace with pleasure ; and shall not delay 
my sanction to the plan, when it shall have reached 
maturity."* 

Father White is called the Apostle of Maryland. 
To this title should be added that oi pater familias 
of Georgetown University. His statue there would 
be truly a sermon in stone or bronze, combining 
the dignity of real history with the amenity of 
ideal landscape. Let it rise on the College campus 
in lofty proportions, fashioned by hands as nearly 
approaching the plastic skill of those of an Angelo 
or Canova as the age possesses. The first century 
of formative growth is past ; the second should 
bring the fine arts and Saturnian times at George- 
town. 

Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was 
the only other English Catholic in that age of in- 
tolerance with still more ample titles than Father 
White to the gratitude of posterity. An eminent 
statesman, fired with the ambition which usually 
accompanies talents of the first order, he overcame 
" that last infirmity of noble mind" by joining the 
Catholic Church when it was a sinking cause in 
England, under the ban of royal interdict, and 

* United States Catholic Magazine, vol. vii. p. 580. J. G. 
Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 56. 

21 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

closing against himself the avenues to a court of 
which he was an acknowledged favorite. Planting 
a colony in America in the interest of Catholics, 
in spite of the well-meant opposition of the most 
influential adherents of the ancient faith in Eng- 
land, with the celebrated Father Robert Parsons, 
S.J., at their head, Lord Baltimore became the 
first of the law-givers of ancient or modern times 
to found an asylum of free conscience, where per- 
secution was punishable by statute and love of 
God was not measured by hatred of man who dif- 
fered in religion from his neighbor. 

The English Catholics had essayed two or three 
other attempts prior to that of Lord Baltimore to 
establish colonies in America. The first of these 
was that of Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas 
Gerard, two Catholic knights, who proceeded with 
circumspection, for Elizabeth or Jezebel was queen. 
They obtained a royal patent June 1 1, 1578, in the 
name of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a Protestant friend, 
as it would have been perilous, if not beheadable, 
for any Catholic to apply directly. But conces- 
sions and restrictions so mingled in this Elizabethan 
grant that the two brave Catholic gentlemen, to 
whom Sir Humphrey had assigned substantial 
rights, boldly petitioned the queen's principal sec- 
retary. Sir Francis Walsingham, for better " lycens 
to travell into those counteris, their to remaine or 

returne back to Englande at their will and pleasure, 

22 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

when and as often as nede shall require." No an- 
swer can be found of record, but Father Parsons 
afterwards said that the queen and council gave 
their consent with jeers and laughter, as an easy 
mode of getting Catholics out of the country. 
" The papists hope," said Tichbourne, the gov- 
ernment spy, " it will prove the best voyage for 
England that was made this forty years." 

The expedition of five vessels, after many draw- 
backs, at last set sail June 11,1 583, just five years 
after the patent was issued. Sir Humphrey Gilbert 
commanded, and two hundred and sixty persons 
embarked. Entering the harbor of St. John's, 
Newfoundland, July 30, they took possession in the 
queen's name, and sailed thence for Norumbega, 
the proposed place of settlement, held generally to 
be the present State of Maine, although Professor 
Horsford, in a recent paper, claims that Massachu- 
setts was Norumbega. After passing Cape Race 
the principal vessel was lost. Sir Humphrey turned 
back dismayed ;' but shipwreck also overtook him, 
and the remnant of the expedition, after many 
hardships, reached England. A Spanish captain 
rescued some of those who clung to the masts of 
the first vessel lost, and brought them back to their 
native land. 

Peckham was the first Catholic among the Eng- 
lish who sought to plant a colony in America of 
whom we have any account. But his Catholic 

23 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

fellow-countrymen no longer shared in his hopes. 
In 1605 Winslade, who had served in the Spanish 
Armada, strove to collect together the Catholic 
refugees who had fled out of England and were 
scattered at several points upon the continent of 
Europe. A second expedition of Catholics to 
America was projected by him. Father Parsons, 
perhaps the ablest writer among the English Jesu- 
its in the time of Elizabeth, opposed this project, 
and dissuaded many of his co-religionists who still 
remained in England frojn taking any active in- 
terest in Winslade's scheme. But during the same 
year two eminent Englishmen organized a further 
expedition to the New World, which, like that of 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, is generally believed to have 
been under Catholic auspices. These were Sir 
Thomas Lord Arundell, of Wardour, a Catholic, 
and his brother-in-law, Henry Wriothesley, Earl 
of Southampton, a Protestant, and son of the 
patron of Shakespeare. Publicity was avoided 
owing to the prejudice against Catholics, but on 
the 5th of March, 1605, the ship Archangel, com- 
manded by Captain Weymouth, set sail on its 
voyage to the West. 

Among the intending planters was one whom 
historians mention as James Rosier, doubtless a 
Jesuit Father, who, to save his relatives from danger 
and Captain Weymouth from the penalties of the 

statute denounced against those who harbored 

24 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

" popish priests," concealed his identity under an 
assumed name. He was employed to come out to 
America, as he himself informs us, " by the Right 
Honourable Thomas Arundell, Raron of War- 
dour," a true Catholic gentleman. After the Jesuit 
custom, Mr. Rosier wrote an account of the expe- 
dition, which he entitled " A True Relation of most 
Prosperous Voyage made this Present Yeere, 1 605, 
by Captain George Weymouth, in the Discovery 
of the Land of Virginia." This is the only account 
of the expedition now extant. It has the flavor of 
the missionary : " We supposing not a little present 
private profit, but a publique good and true zeale 
of promulgating God's holy Church, by planting 
Christianity, to be the sole intent of the Honour- 
able settersforth of this discovery." The Arch- 
angel reached the coast near Cape Cod in May, 
soon after touched at Monhegan, to which Captain 
Weymouth gave the name of St. George's, an- 
chored at Rooth Ray, which he styled Pentecost 
Harbor, and ascended the Kennebec River.* 

At this period Father Parsons issued a tract 
against such expeditions, entitled " Judgement 
about transferring Englishe Catholiques to the 
Northern part of America." He argued that the 
king and council would oppose the scheme, and 
without their approval Catholics could not sell 

* J. G. Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 26. 

25 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

their estates and leave England. Thus, rich Cath- 
olics would imperil their property by going out of 
the kingdom, and poor ones could not go without 
the rich. He pointed out that Spain, Flanders, 
and other governments, jealous of English col- 
onizers, would obstruct such expeditions, and 
pressed his objections so ingeniously that Lord 
Arundell was discouraged, and relinquished the 
project which Captain Weymouth was carrying 
out so prosperously in his voyage to New Eng- 
land, then called, by Mr. Rosier, Virginia. 

But a third experiment, first the voyage to Ava- 
lon and next the expedition to Maryland, was en- 
tered upon a few years later by a man in whose 
vocabulary the word failure would seem not to 
have been found. This was Sir George Calvert, 
the first Lord Baltimore. " The charter of Mary- 
land," says William George Read, " the undoubted 
production of his pen, is the fair and lasting monu- 
ment of his wisdom and his virtues. His military 
exploit may be lost in the blinding blaze of Eng- 
land's martial glory; his sacrifices to conviction 
may be merged in those of her myriad martyrs ; 
but his charter shall endure on our statute book 
so long as the blue firmament of the American 
flag shall sparkle with the brilliant beams of the 
Maryland star." I think it is peculiarly fitting to 
place a likeness of this truly great man, who sent 

the Jesuits to Maryland, in a little volume relating 

26 




SIR GEORGE CALVERT 
First Lord Baltimore 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

to a college which those same Jesuits founded. 
The New York antiquarian bookseller, the late 
Mr. Joseph Sabin, procured this picture in London, 
and informed me that connoisseurs considered it a 
good one. I purchased it from him shortly before 
his death. 

When the Pilgrims of the Ark and the Dove 
reached the Potomac they came to anchor near 
an island which they named St. Clement's, prob- 
ably that now known as St. George's. The first 
mass was there celebrated on Lady-day, the 25th 
of March, 1634. Father White was filled with 
joy, and says in his " Relatio Itineris," " On the 
day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary in the year 1634, we celebrated the first 
mass on that Island ; never before had it been 
offered in that region." In this opinion he was in 
error. Over a century earlier — that is to say, in 
1526 — mass had been offered up repeatedly by 
Dominican Fathers at Guandape, on James River, 
Virginia, and again it had been often celebrated 
on the Rappahannock River, Virginia, by two 
Jesuit Fathers in the year 1570, sixty-four years 
before the mass was said on St. Clement's Island 
by Father White. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon was 
the first European to reach Virginia. He came 
out with a numerous colony in 1 526, under a 
patent obtained from the Emperor Charles V., en- 
tered the Capes and Chesapeake Bay, ascended the 

27 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

James River, and planted his colony at a place 
where a village named Guandape was built, almost 
on the identical spot selected eighty-one years after- 
wards by Captain John Smith and the English ex- 
plorers sent out by the London Company in 1607 
to plant their colony and build a town, to which 
they gave the historic name of Jamestown. Fathers 
Anthony de Montesinos and Anthony de Cervantes 
and Brother Peter de Astrada, all of the Order of 
Saint Dominic, accompanied Lucas Vasquez de 
Ayllon to Virginia. They became the first resi- 
dent priests, erected a chapel, and offered the holy 
sacrifice daily from the summer of 1526 to the 
spring of 1527, when a malignant fever broke out 
among the colonists, which carried off the com- 
mandant, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, and led to the 
abandonment of the colony. These Spaniards 
were the first Europeans who entered the primeval 
forests of the Old Dominion. The survivors set 
sail under Francis Gomez, the second in command, 
for Santo Domingo.* 

The Jesuits were the next to arrive in Virginia. 
On the 10th of September, 1570, just thirty-eight 

* The profound historian. Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in his 
learned history. The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, pp. 
104-107, gives an elaborate array of authorities in relation to 
this the first colonization of Virginia. The chief historians 
cited by Shea are Navarrete, Father Cervantes, Fernandez, 
Melendez, Charlevoix, Touron, Valladares, and Helps. 

28 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

years before the coming of Captain John Smith, 
several Jesuit missionaries settled on the banks of 
the Rappahannock River, where, for six months, 
they celebrated mass and preached the gospel to 
the Indians. These men were Fathers Segura, 
S.J., and Ouiros, S.J. (the former was Vice-Provin- 
cial of Florida), and the following Scholastics and 
Lay Brothers: Solis, Mendez, Redondo, Linares 
Gomez, and Zevallos. They built a chapel and a 
rude dwelling on the banks of the river, and 
labored zealously among the red men until the 
month of February, 157^' when their treacherous 
Indian guide led a hostile band of savages among 
them, and a general massacre followed, only one 
escaping, Alonzo, an Indian boy, a convert to 
Christianity, much attached to the missionaries. 
This youth was concealed by a friendly native, 
and later carried intelligence of the massacre to the 
Spaniards, An investigation laid bare the ghastly 
details. Father Quiros and Brothers Mendez and 
Solis were slain on the 14th of February, 1571, 
and Father Segura and the surviving Brothers on 
the 18th of the same month.* 

The first blood of white men shed in Virginia 
was that of these martyrs in the cause of religion, 



* Jesuit Missions in the United States, p. 16, by Father 
J. F. X. O'Conor, SJ. Dr. J. G. Shea's Catholic Church 
in Colonial Days, pp. 149, 150. 

29 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

which gave to the " sacred soil" a higher claim to 
that title than the civic exploits, however noble, of 
its subsequent heroes. Southern historians and 
chroniclers may permit me, a native Virginian, 
loving the grand old State ardently, as every true 
son should love such a mother, to offer a hint that 
their strange omission to mention the Dominican 
mission on the James, and the Jesuit mission on 
the Rappahannock, leaves an historical hiatus, which 
should not be allowed to disfigure future narratives. 
It was only the other day that one of the most 
respectable Protestant historians, of Massachusetts, 
Mr. George C. Ellis, frankly admitted that the 
celebrated Puritan hero Captain Miles Standish, of 
Plymouth Rock, whose praises Longfellow has 
sung, may have been after all a good Roman 
Catholic. He used to go away quietly to Canada 
at regular intervals, Mr. Ellis informs us, in order, 
it is conjectured, to make his confession, and thus 
equip himself the better to govern the Puritans, 
after having been shriven by a French Jesuit."^ 



* The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of Massachu- 
setts Bay, by George C. Ellis, 1888. This recent work, re- 
markable for historical research, contains the following inter- 
esting statement respecting Miles Standish : ** Our historians 
have long recognized something unexplained in the relations 
between the famous, peppery-tempered — but for his prowess 
invaluable — military captain. Miles Standish, and the Pil- 
grims at Plymouth. He had followed their fortunes from his 

30 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Magna est Veritas. Why conceal these things ^ 
If true, they are bound to be found out. But our 
most distinguished historical writers are not obnox- 
ious to my criticism of some Virginia chroniclers. 
Such men as Irving and Bancroft, and the Protes- 
tant Bishop Kip, of Albany, have not hesitated a 
moment to tell the truth about the early Jesuits. 

" Greater devotion to the cause than theirs," 
says Dr. Kip, " has never been seen since the 
Apostles' days." Warming to his subject, he thus 
expresses himself in the preface to his interesting 
work, " Early Jesuit Missions in North America" : 
" There is no page in our country's history more 
touching and romantic than that which records 
the labor and sufferings of the Jesuit missionaries. 
In these Western wilds they were the earliest pio- 
neers of civilization and faith. The wild hunter 
or the adventurous traveler who, penetrating the 
forests, came to new and strange tribes, often found 
that years before the disciples of Loyola had pre- 

service in the Low Countries, and was constant to and fully- 
trusted by them. But he was not under their church cove- 
nant, though not shocking them otherwise than by free speech. 
It has been suggested that the explanation may be that Standish, 
loyal to the faith of his ancestry and family, may have been 
an adherent of the old Church, being quietly reticent on the 
matter. He was always ready to go in his pinnace for truck- 
ing with the Indians at the Kennebec. Here on his visits he 
might easily have had the services of a priest for adjusting his 
conscience.'* P. 366. 

31 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

ceded him in that wilderness. Traditions of the 
' Black-robes' still lingered among the Indians. 
On some moss-grown tree they pointed out the 
traces of their work, and in wonder he deciphered, 
carved side by side on its trunk, the emblem of 
our salvation and the lilies of the Bourbons. Amid 
the snows of Hudson's Bay — among the woody 
islands and beautiful inlets of the St. Lawrence — 
by the council fires of the Hurons and the Algon- 
quins — at the sources of the Mississippi, where 
first of the white men their eyes looked upon the 
Falls of St. Anthony, and then traced down the 
course of the bounding river as it rushed onward 
to earn its title of ' Father of Waters' — on the 
vast prairies of Illinois and Missouri — among the 
blue hills which hem in the salubrious dwellings 
of the Cherokees — and in the thick canebrakes of 
Louisiana — everywhere were found the members 
of the ' Society of Jesus.' Marquette, Joliet, Bre- 
beuf, Jogues, Lalemant, Rasle, and Marest are the 
names which the West should ever hold in remem- 
brance." 

Not less emphatic is the testimony of United 
States Commissioner John Russell Bartlett, in his 
" Personal Narrative of Explorations in Texas, 
New Mexico," etc., published in 1854. "Long 
before the consecration of Plymouth Rock," says 
Mr. Bartlett, in speaking of the Jesuits, " the re- 
ligion of Christ had been made known to the In- 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

dians of New Mexico ; the Rocky Mountains were 
scaled, and the Gila and Colorado Rivers, which in 
our day are attracting so much interest as novel- 
ties, were passed again and again. The broad 
continent, too, to cross which, with all the ad- 
vantages we possess, requires a whole season, was 
traversed from ocean to ocean before Raleigh or 
Smith or the Pilgrim Fathers had touched our 
shores." 

Here are the words of that still more eminent 
writer, the Goldsmith of America : " All persons," 
says Washington Irving, in his " Knickerbocker," 
" who are in the least familiar with the early his- 
tory of the West, know with what pure and un- 
tiring zeal the Catholic missionaries pursued the 
work of conversion among the savages. Before a 
Virginian had crossed the Blue Ridge, and while 
Connecticut was still the extreme frontier of New 
England, more than one man whose youth had 
been passed among the warm valleys of Languedoc, 
had explored the wilds of Wisconsin, and caused 
the hymn of Catholic praise to rise from the 
prairies of Illinois. The Catholic priest went even 
before the soldier and the trader ; from lake to 
lake, from river to river, the Jesuits pressed on 
unresting, and, with a power which no other 
Christians have exhibited, won to their faith the 
warlike Miamis and the luxurious Illinois." 

Nor is the historian of the United States want- 

3 33 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

ing in his tribute to the Jesuits. " Every tradi- 
tion," says Mr. Bancroft in the second volume of 
his history, " bears testimony to their worth. . . . 
The horrors of a Canadian life in the wilderness 
were resisted by an invincible passive courage, and 
a deep internal tranquillity. Away from the ameni- 
ties of life, away from the opportunities of vain 
glory, they became dead to the world, and possessed 
their souls in unalterable peace. The history of 
their labors is connected with the origin of every 
celebrated town in the annals of French America ; 
not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a 
Jesuit led the way." 

Such were the men who had come into Mary- 
land with Governor Calvert to open a school 
which has grown to be Georgetown University, 
and to lay the foundation of the Catholic Church 
in the United States. The one particular spot racy 
of the soil of ancient Catholic Maryland, part and 
parcel of it, carved out of its bosom, peopled in 
the whole blood by the sons of its Pilgrims, and 
bearing the likeness of the Land of the Sanctuary 
written in its face, is the shrine and the College 
at Georgetown. 

The See of Baltimore is something larger, some- 
thing different. The Father Carroll of 1 773 was 
a simple, ardent Jesuit, a true son of the Pilgrims, 
but the Father Carroll of 1 784, when he became, 
by decree of the Propaganda, Prefect Apostolic 

34 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

of the Catholic Church in the United States, and 
much more of 1 790, when he became first Bishop, 
was no longer a Jesuit. A true son of the Pil- 
grims always, he had become like Washington 
in another sphere, who was first a Virginian, and 
next father of his country, the representative of 
others outside of the Maryland patrimony ; he 
had become spiritual father of the Catholic 
Church in the United States. His glowing dream 
of Georgetown, of which his early letters to 
Father Plowden contain an animated picture, 
underwent a change. He strove hard at first to 
make the dream fulfil itself, but its outlines es- 
caped him, and, as he stretched out his hand to 
grasp them, they vanished. Henceforward he left 
the shrine on the Potomac to the Jesuits, to whom 
it belonged, while ever holding it and them in 
most affectionate regard. He now directed his 
gaze to the Patapsco, where he planted a new 
seminary, and received from France providentially 
a holy Order of Men, the Sulpitians, cast out of 
native land by the infidel French revolution, who 
gladly came to Baltimore to lift up the hands of 
the zealous Carroll, and help him to establish 
another seat of theological and secular learning, 
St. Mary's College.* 

* Referring to Archbishop Carroll's relations to the College 
at Georgetown and the Seminary at Baltimore, Dr. John Gil- 

35 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Later on Dubois, Whitfield, Purcell, McCaf- 
frey, and other holy and able men built up Mount 
St. Mary's College at Emmittsburg, Maryland, a 
third prolific nursery of bishops, priests, and lay- 
men. 

But Georgetown is the offspring of the Pilgrim 
Fathers of 1634. The Jesuits who came in the 
Ark and the Dove were the lineal ancestors in 
the ecclesiastical order of Neale, Molyneux, and 
McElroy, of Kohlmann, Grassi, and Dubuisson, 
of Ryder, Fenwick, and Fulton, of Healy and 
Doonan, and of Richards and Whitney^ as well as 
of that long line of Jesuits which stretches from 
the cradle-land of St. Inigoes, in the early part of 
the seventeenth century, to Georgetown Univer- 
sity, at the dawn of the twentieth century. 

Father Carroll founded the Academy on the 
Potomac in 1789, and Father Ashton, procurator 
of the temporalities of the Jesuits, advanced the 
money to pay the grantors of the land, John 
Threlkeld and William Deakins, Jr., and the 
bricklayers and carpenters who built the first 
house, which still stands in the statelier group 
soaring to-day above and around it. 

The reader may readily recognize it in the 



mary Shea remarks : ** His endeavor to effect a hearty har- 
mony in education and mission work did not succeed." — 
Shea's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, p. 604. 

36 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

picture I have reproduced at the beginning of this 
volume, which gives a southeastern view of the 
College buildings. 

While living with his mother on Rock Creek 
Father Carroll's attention was attracted by Alex- 
ander Doyle, architect of Trinity Church, to the 
noble hill just west of Georgetown, overlooking 
the Potomac, where it emerges from its narrow 
bed in rocky defiles and widens into a navigable 
river. After General Braddock left Alexandria on 
the fatal march to the West, he pitched the first 
encampment on the high ground where the Na- 
tional Observatory now stands, thereafter known 
as Camp Hill. It is said that the charming pros- 
pect which there unfolded itself to the eye of the 
young Washington decided his choice at a later 
day for the location of the seat of government. 
From the river an expansive plain spread out in 
the shape of a crescent. Majestic hills towered 
over the Eastern Branch of the Potomac, ex- 
tended around to the north in swelling elevation, 
and then curved westward into almost mountain 
heights, the last of which jutted out over the river, 
a noble promontory, where Georgetown College 
now stands, the whole vista forming almost a perfect 
semicircle. 

The peculiar configuration of the College heights 
afforded a natural drainage, sanitary breezes from 
every point of the compass, and protection from 

37 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

the rigors of winter by the higher hills to the west, 
and the spreading champaign country similarly 
protected on the east. For over fifty years not a 
single death occurred among the students. 

I have spoken, or rather written, here of the 
Fathers who founded Georgetown College as 
Jesuits ; ex-Jesuits more properly I should have 
called them, for the Society of Jesus, on the 2 1 st 
of July, 1773, dies ir^, was suppressed by Pope 
Clement XIV., at the maleficent instigation of the 
Bourbon kings of France, Spain, Portugal, and 
Naples, who had already expelled the Jesuits from 
their kingdoms, and sought in vain to secure their 
destruction at the hands of Pope Clement XIII. 
When the tomb by Canova was erected to the 
memory of that gentle and holy Pope, who had 
refused to be coerced into crushing the Jesuits by 
the enemies of the Church, the great sculptor de- 
signed two lions couchant on pedestals at the feet 
of the Holy Father, one sleeping, the other awake 
and watchful. " The sleeping lion," said he, when 
asked what they typified, " denotes the gentleness 
of Pope Clement XIII. ; the lion fully awake sym- 
bolizes his courage and firmness in refusing to sup- 
press the Jesuit Society assailed on all sides by 
deadly enemies." But the emissaries of the Bour- 
bons, Choiseul and Madame de Pompadour, of 
France, — though the infamous woman died before 
the suppression, — the vulture-like Florida Blanca, 

38 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

of Spain, and the ever execrable Pombal, of Portu- 
gal, waited in stealth until the conclave was assem- 
bled to elect the successor of Clement XIIL They 
then swarmed to Rome, invaded the cloister of the 
Sacred College itself, and became a potent and 
malignant factor in the elevation of Clement XIV. 
It was an evil hour for the Church. For some 
time the fortitude of the new Pope was proof 
against their blandishments and intrigues. He 
answered their importunities by directing attention 
to the impressive public approval of the Jesuits by 
nineteen popes, the unanimous praises of their 
order, uttered without a dissenting voice by the 
whole thirty sovereign pontiffs who had reigned 
since their foundation, and to the solemn, august 
sanction of the Institute of Saint Ignatius by the 
Council of Trent itself. Oh, the inconsistency of 
man ! Overborne at last by the imperious Bour- 
bon kings and their impious tools, Clement XIV., 
without the Specification of a single offence, reluc- 
tantly signed the bull suppressing the Jesuits 
throughout the world, threw overboard the most 
precious portion of the cargo, as if that would save 
the imperilled ship, then took to his bed, the vic- 
tim of an inconsolable grief which baffled the doc- 
tors, and passed away at the end of fourteen months, 
literally done to death by the enemies of the Church. 
The control of the Sacred College once more be- 
came of paramount importance ; but, to the ever- 

39 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lasting credit of the dying Pope be it said, he re- 
fused to make the Church the football of kings. 
May that brave speech, "We will not do it," meet 
him in heaven, and outweigh all the rest. " While 
at the point of death," says Artaud de Montor, " he 
was greatly urged to name eleven cardinals who 
in that year had been reserved in petto ; but he con- 
stantly replied, ' We cannot and we will not do it. 
The Lord will judge our reasons.' They knelt to 
him and repeated their request. He replied de- 
cisively and regardless of etiquette, ' I am on my 
way to eternity, and I know why.' " * 

Where are the Bourbons to-day ? Quite down 
and out, scattered to the four winds of heaven by 
another unscrupulous despot. Napoleon Bonaparte ; 
while Pius VIL, one of the worthiest occupants of 
the chair of Peter, restored the Jesuits to their lost 
rights, and on the 7th of August, 1814, put them 
again in the vanguard of the church militant. 
Many philippics against them and many eulogies 
of the Jesuits are found in history, but perhaps the 
noblest tribute that can be paid to them is to point 
to the fact that the bull of suppression, Dominus ac 
Redemptor noster^ was submitted to by them with- 
out a murmur, although it destroyed their mighty 
order at one fell blow, and not a word of censure, 

* Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, vol. ii. p. 376, 
by De Montor. 

40 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

much less of rebellion, did they ever utter against 
the hand that smote them. Match this self-denial 
v/ho can.* 



* Father de Ravignan's Apology for Clement XIII. and 
Clement XIV., the high-minded champion and the reluctant 
destroyer of the Society, is the best defence of the latter Pope 
which has been written, because it is unequivocally true. 
This noble work was not only written by a Jesuit, but the 
idea of writing it was inspired by the General of the Jesuits, 
Father Roothaan. In a letter to Father de Ravignan, suggest- 
ing that he should perform the magnanimous task. Father 
Roothaan said, *' * Poor Pope,' wrote St. Alphonsus Liguori, 
* che potevafaref What could he do?' This is a view to 
which I subscribe with all my heart, and it constitutes, as it 
seems to me, the pontic's true defence." — De Ponlevoy's Life 
of Father de Ravignan, p. 488. 



41 



CHAPTER II 

LEGAL STATUS OF MARYLAND JESUITS DURING DAYS OF 
THEIR SUPPRESSION 

IN Maryland the suppression led to a very com- 
plicated situation. There were no other priests 
in that colony but Jesuits. For nearly a cen- 
tury and a half they had labored in Maryland under 
the greatest difficulties. Plundered by Claiborne 
and Ingle^ some of them slain and the rest carried 
off into captivity, their order was reinforced by 
equally zealous successors, who, at the hands of 
Coode and the Puritans of the Cromwellite era, 
endured trials fully as cruel, but less destructive 
than the earlier persecution. The planters, whether 
Protestant or Catholic, had learned to love the 
Jesuits, and shielded them from their enemies. 
After the revolution of 1688, throughout the 
Jacobite wars, and particularly after the battle of 
CuUoden, although the Maryland Jesuits were 
anti-Jacobites, and Cardinal York, the brother of 
Charles Edward Stuart, was one of their active en- 
emies at Rome at the time of the suppression of 
their order, nevertheless King William, Queen 
Anne, and the three Georges proscribed and double- 
taxed them in Maryland as Jacobite sympathizers, 

42 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

and hounded them down with causeless and inex- 
cusable harshness. During the old French war, 
preceding the American Revolution, the Maryland 
Jesuits continued to be the victims of fanatical op- 
pression. The laws of the Colonial Assembly at 
this time contain numerous anti-Jesuit enactments. 
But the sympathy of the people was on their side, 
and the Fathers labored on in secret among the 
gentry and the plain people with a constancy and 
devotion which has wrung praise and admiration 
from such respectable Protestant historians as 
Hawks, Davis, and McMahon. 

They had acquired a considerable landed estate 
during the earlier and better days of the colony, 
called by McMahon the golden age of Maryland, 
before the Toleration Act was torn to pieces by 
the new-comers attracted to the colony by the 
liberal policy of the Calverts. In his " Brief Ac- 
count" Bishop Fenwick relates the following inter- 
esting particulars : '' Rev. Thomas Copley, called 
Thomas Copley, Esq., profited by the conditions 
of plantation proposed by the Lord Proprietary. 
He had a number of servants transported to the 
province for which he demanded and obtained 
twenty-eight thousand five hundred acres of land, 
giving the greater part to others, and reserved only 
eight thousand acres for the Society and Church." * 

* Woodstock Letters, vol. ix. p. 171. 
43 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

By donations and purchase from the Indians, 
and occasional legacies by pious Catholics, the 
Fathers afterwards added somewhat to their original 
landed possessions. Much was lost after Protes- 
tant ascendancy was established through confis- 
cation and the persecutions already mentioned. 
That any remnant of their property was saved to 
them in those dark days is due to the chivalrous 
sense of equity, not only of Catholics but of their 
Protestant neighbors, who when the spoiler was 
nigh took title from the Fathers by deeds of abso- 
lute conveyance, with a secret trust, not for record, 
as the title was in fee, but compliance with which 
was left to the grantee's sense of honor, and to that 
alone. A few rare instances of bad faith are re- 
lated, but to the credit of those noble Protestant 
and Catholic gentry be it said, these secret trusts 
were faithfully observed, and at the dawn of a bet- 
ter day discharged by a reconveyance of the lands 
thus magnanimously protected.* 

* I am indebted to Fathers George Fenwick, James Ryder, 
and Charles H. Stonestreet, dear, dear friends of my boyhood, 
whom I often conversed with in relation to the early Jesuit 
Fathers of Maryland, for much information about them not 
found in books, and which would be of priceless value if it 
had been reduced to authentic form. It is fast becoming 
legendary gossip. Father Fenwick especially was a prodigy 
of an antiquarian. 'Tis a pity that the folk-lore of the Poto- 
mac, the St. Mary's, and the Patuxent in the days of F. F. 
White, Altham, Copley, Poulton, Hunter, and Lewis, of 

44 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Bishop England, with his accustomed eloquence, 
thus refers to these gleams of sunshine which re- 
lieve the gloom of an otherwise trackless night 
of rapacity and oppression : 

" Some of the Irish, and a few of the American 
Catholics," says the Bishop, " sought through the 
friendship and honor of their Protestant neighbors 
to preserve at the same time their property and 
their faith. They gave absolute titles of their 
lands, by a legal transfer, to their Protestant friends, 
who undertook privately, by a pledge of honor, 
which was all they could give, that whilst their 
ostensible ownership covered it from confiscation 
and rapine, they would administer it for the bene- 
fit of the Catholic family that confided in their 
friendship, and would reconvey it to the proper 
owners by sufficient titles when the law should 
permit Catholics to become proprietors. ... In 
America equally as in Ireland were the Catholics 
emaciated in numbers and in property by the oper- 
ation of this atrocious code. . . . And in Mary- 
land, as in Ireland, if we find evidence of Protes- 
tant cruelty and oppression, we also find many 
noble instances of Protestant generosity, of Protes- 
tant friendship, and of Protestant protection." * 



which he told me so much, should be buried in his grave. 
He wrote but little. 

* Bishop England's Works, vol. iii. pp. 234, 235. 

45 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Having paid this just tribute to Maryland 
Protestants, it is obvious that Bishop England 
could not have been aware that much of the 
property which he refers to in the same paper from 
which I have quoted the preceding extract be- 
longed to the Jesuit Fathers, who confided it to 
the honor of those very Protestants so highly and 
so justly commended for their fidelity by the dis- 
tinguished Bishop. He could not have known, 
when he says the property " legally vested in the 
priests of Maryland," a corporate body, " insensi- 
bly passed into the possession of the Jesuits of 
Georgetown," that it could not have passed into 
the possession of anybody else without a violation 
of good faith on the part of those Maryland 
priests, all ex-Jesuits, in whom it was " legally 
vested," but who had plighted their word of honor 
so to pass it to its Jesuit owners at the earliest 
practicable moment. Having praised Protestant 
trustees for protecting the property of Catholics, 
Bishop England would not have withheld praise 
from the secular priests of Maryland for protecting 
the property of Jesuits, had the true state of the 
case been known to him when he penned the 
following observations : 

" There was another obstacle, arising from the 
poverty of the Catholics as a body and the almost 
total absence of any funds, save what could be 

obtained from their generosity ; the sole exception 

46 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

was some property which had been originally des- 
tined for the missions that were served in early 
times by the Jesuits, and a portion of which had 
by a variety of contrivances been preserved, and 
which had at this period been legally vested in the 
priests of Maryland, who had been incorporated 
by the new government ; and which has since in- 
sensibly passed into the possession of the Jesuits of 
Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, upon- the 
condition of paying something towards the sup- 
port of the archiepiscopal See of Baltimore. It 
was from this fund that the clergy then derived 
the principal means for their support." * 

Bishop England, of course, believed he was 
stating the facts correctly in the extract quoted, 
or it goes without saying that he would not have 
written it. But he was mistaken. Those who 
held title to the Jesuit estates. Catholic and Prot- 
estant confidential trustees, were confronted after 
the suppression with this difficulty, a most serious 
problem : there was no one to whom they could 
turn over those estates in good faith to their prin- 
cipal, the late Society. Bishop Challoner did not 
claim them after the brief of suppression ; under 
the penal laws of England, he could not do so 
without the risk of almost certain confiscation by 
the British government. But, as a matter of fact, 

* Bishop England's Works, vol. iii. p. 239. 
47 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

he made no claim whatever to them, and restricted 
himself simply to asking and receiving written 
submission to the brief of Clement XIV. on the 
part of the Maryland Jesuits. Twenty-three Jesuit 
Fathers in Maryland and Pennsylvania had become 
secular priests, merely private individuals. These 
things happened at the dawn of the American 
Revolution, and thereafter the Articles of Confed- 
eration and the Constitution of the United States 
swept away English penal laws, and afforded ample 
protection to the person and property of every 
citizen. 

By the terms of the suppression the property 
of Jesuits, wherever situated, passed to the local 
ordinaries of the Church. I quote the language 
of the brief: " We take from it and abrogate each 
and all of its offices, ministries, administrations, 
houses, schools, and habitations, in all provinces, 
kingdoms, and states whatsoever, and under what- 
soever title to them belonging. . . . And we wholly 
transfer that same jurisdiction and authority to the 
local ordinaries, according to the form, the case, 
and the persons." * 

This brief of Pope Clement XIV., dated July 
21, 1773, ^^^ expressly repealed by the brief of 
Pope Pius VII., dated August 7, 1814, restoring 

* Artaud de Montor's Lives and Times of the Roman 
Pontiffs, vol. ii. pp. 358, 359. 

48 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

the Society of Jesus throughout the world. I 
quote the words of Pius VIL : 

" And we do now and from this time take under 
our own, and this Holy See's immediate patronage, 
protection, and obedience, all the colleges, houses, 
provinces, and members there united (of Jesuits), 
or which or who may thereafter be united or ag- 
gregated thereto. . . . Notwithstanding the apos- 
tolic constitutions and ordinances, and especially 
the aforesaid letters, in the form of a brief, of 
Clement XIV. of happy memory, beginning 
Dominus et Redemptor noster^ expedited under the 
seal of the Fisherman on the 2 1st day of July, 
1773, which to give effect to these presents we 
hereby intend expressly and specially to repeal, 
and all others whatever to the contrary." * 

There was no local ordinary in Maryland, and 
Bishop Challoner would not and could not act. 
As the Jesuit Society could hold no property under 
the proscriptive penal laws of England (fortunate 
obstacle, similia similibus curantur)^ the Maryland 
estates of the Jesuits remained in the custody of 
individual priests and others as secret trustees. 
The learned Dr. Shea was of opinion, from devel- 
opments in other more recent cases, such as the 
Pious Fund of California and the Jesuit estates in 



* Artaud de Montor's Lives and Times of the Roman 
Pontiffs, vol. ii. p. 702. 

4 49 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

the province of Quebec, that the view entertained 
at Rome was that the brief of 1773 vested the 
property of the Society in the Pope. " This," 
says that great Catholic historian, "though not 
expressed in the documents, will explain the action 
in the Maryland controversy."* 

Constitutional lawyers might show that this 
view is near the dangerous border-line which di- 
vides temporal from spiritual dominion in the 
United States. The opinion of Roger B. Taney 
in the Harold case, when President John Quincy 
Adams unwarrantably intruded in the spiritual 
affairs of the Holy See, an interference distinctly 
disclaimed by the Secretary of State, Henry Clay, 
when he wrote that it was conducted in his absence 
" by direction of the President," furnishes an ad- 
mirably lucid exposition of the true distinction be- 
tween temporal and spiritual power. " The power," 
said Mr. Taney, " exercised by the Pope in the 
Roman Catholic Church has no connection what- 
ever with that which he possesses as a temporal 
prince, but differs from it altogether in its charac- 
ter and the means by which it is enforced. And 
if he should be deprived of his temporal dominion, 
his jurisdiction in the Roman Catholic Church 
would remain unaltered in any respect. His au- 



* Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United 
States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 71. 

50 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

thority in the Church is merely spiritual, and obe- 
dience in spiritual matters to a spiritual superior is 
certainly no transfer of allegiance in temporal con- 
cerns; and it is impossible in the nature of things 
that obedience due from a Roman Catholic, whether 
layman or clergyman, to the authority of the Pope, 
in spiritual matters, can ever come in conflict with 
the duties of allegiance or the calls of patriotism. 
The spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope is a part of 
the Roman Catholic religion, and is necessary to 
the free exercise of that religion. And it is a part 
of the civil rights of those citizens of the United 
States who are members of the Roman Catholic 
Church that this spiritual jurisdiction should be 
freely exercised, and the government of the United 
States have no right to restrain it, nor to interfere 
with it. And such an interposition on the part of 
the government of the United States would be an 
unwarrantable invasion of the rights of the Roman 
Catholic citizens of this country, and a palpable 
violation of the principles of the Constitution 
(Signed) " R. B. Taney. 

"Baltimore, November 23, 1829."^ 

Mr. Gaston, in his opinion in the same case, de- 
fines the limits of papal authority, and points out 
clearly, but with not quite the unequivocal bold- 



* Bishop England's Works, vol. v. p. 231. 
SI 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

ness and vigor of Mr. Taney, that its operations 
are confined to the conscience of the citizen, which 
in the United States is free and untrammelled. 

" The Bishop of Rome," says Mr. Gaston (the 
first student at Georgetown), " is the acknowledged 
head of the Roman Catholic Church, and as such 
must have a jurisdiction of some sort over it. Juris- 
diction implies obedience. . . . He who omits no 
duty and violates no command, which fidelity to his 
country demands, has fulfilled all the obligations of 
allegiance. The obedience rendered to the orders 
of the spiritual superior has no connection with or 
reference to the temporal authority of that supe- 
rior, and would be precisely the same whether such 
superior were the inmate of a prison or the pos- 
sessor of a throne. The conscience of him who 
obeys, and his conscience only, regulates his obe- 
dience, and of that conscience his country allows 
him the undisputed dominion. 

" The right of the citizen cannot be infringed by 
a requisition which he may disobey if his con- 
science will permit, and the authority of his gov- 
ernment is not concerned in a matter purely of 
religious obligation. That cannot be deemed a 
sentence which depends for its execution on the en- 
lightened will of the individual to whom it is di- 
rected ; the aid of the government is not needed 
to protect him against admonitions addressed to 

his conscience ; and those intrusted with temporal 

52 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

power here have no right to interpose to prevent 
his receiving or to induce him to disregard 
them." 

(Signed) " William Gaston. 

"Raleigh, November 26, 1829." 



After they had recovered somewhat from the 
first shock of the blow which fell upon them like 
an electric bolt, the Maryland Jesuits faced the 
new situation with that cheerful courage which 
always and everywhere has distinguished the disci- 
ples of Loyola. As everybody wished to act hon- 
estly, the complication was unravelled in this way : 
Forming themselves into a voluntary association 
of secular clergy, with Father John Lewis at their 
head, as he had been the Superior of their late 
Society, they continued to defer to him as Vicar- 
Apostolic of the London District, a title incident 
to his former office. 

At a Chapter of this Body of the Clergy held 
at Whitemarsh on October 11, 1 784, they re- 
adopted a resolution which they had passed at a 
previous meeting or Chapter, held at the same 
place on November 6, 1783, to the following 
effect : 

That they would " to the best of their power 
promote and effect an absolute and entire restora- 
tion to the Society of Jesus (if it should please 

53 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Almighty God to re-establish it in this country) 
of all the property belonging to it." * 

This was the way in which that property " has 
since insensibly passed,' if I may repeat Bishop 
England's words, " into the possession of the 
Jesuits of Georgetown." 

The Maryland statute of mortmain, and the 
common law doctrine in regard to the lands of 
religious bodies, rendered it necessary for the vol- 
untary association of the clergy to become a body 
corporate. They accordingly procured the passage 
of an act by the Maryland Legislature, December 
23, 1792, entitled " An Act for securing certain 
estates and property for the support and uses of 
the Ministers of the Roman Catholic religion." 
By this statute a body politic and corporate was 
created, to which all persons holding the old Jesuit 
estates were authorized to convey them for the 
better carrying out of the original trusts. This 
was done by the individual holders of the farms. 
The new body adopted a name, as it was empow- 
ered to do, and it was thereafter known as " The 
Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen." 

All seemed clear sailing at last, but no, one 
thing had been overlooked. At a General Chapter 
of the Clergy, held at Whitemarsh, November 1 3, 

* Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, by B. U. Camp- 
bell, p. 373. 

54 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

1786, authority to erect a school at Georgetown 
had been granted, and shortly after Fathers Car- 
roll, Molyneux, and Ashton were appointed special 
trustees to purchase and take title as grantees of 
the land on which the Academy was to be built. 
They so acted, as appears from the subjoined en- 
dorsement of the clerk of the court, which the 
indefatigable Father J. Havens Richards, S. J., late 
President ot Georgetown, caused to be copied for 
me, I had almost said photographed, such is that 
Father's rare executive precision, from the back of 
the old deed which is still preserved at the College : 



** Deakins & Threlkeld 



u. 



TO . ^ 

Carroll Molyneux & Ashton j ^ 

rec^ this 11*'' of April 1789 to be re- 
corded. And same day recorded in 
Liber D. folio 196 And 197 One of the 
Land records for Montgomery County 
And Examined 

pr B Beall Clk" 

The Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergy- 
men procured the passage of another act, January 
20, 1798, so careful were the old ex- Jesuits in 
guarding the corpus of the estates of the late So- 
ciety, authorizing and empowering Messrs. Carroll, 
Molyneux, and Ashton to convey to the said Cor- 
poration the lands, buildings, and appurtenances 

55 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

known as Georgetown College. This was accord- 
ingly done. The same statute, the last concerning 
the College enacted by the Maryland Legislature, 
as Georgetown soon after passed under the juris- 
diction of Congress, authorized the Corporation to 
receive donations for the Academy or College suffi- 
cient to maintain and educate thirty scholars, pro- 
vided that the annual usufruct of such donations 
should not exceed four thousand dollars. 

Now began complications which, like Jaundice 
against Jaundice, seemed to be interminable. Pope 
Pius VL, June 9, 1 784, as we have seen, appointed 
Father Carroll Superior of the Missions in the 
thirteen United States of North America, with the 
faculty to administer the sacrament of confirmation 
as Vicar- Apostolic. " The Form of Government" 
in nineteen articles was adopted by the Chapter 
held at Whitemarsh, on the 1 ith of October, 1784, 
together with " Rules for the particular government 
of members belonging to the Body of the Clergy, 
binding on all persons at present composing the 
Body of Clergy in Maryland and Pennsylvania." 

The clergy safeguarded the temporalities, which 
on the same day they resolved to return to the 
Jesuit Society, if restored, by retaining them in the 
mean time in their own exclusive custody. I quote 
the language of the article : 

" XIX. The person invested with spiritual juris- 
diction in the country shall not in that quality 

56 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

have any power over or in the temporal property 
of the Clergy." 

The Vicar-ApostoHc, Father Carroll, was present 
and perfectly acquiesced in this article. 

On the 6th of November, 1 789, Pope Pius VL 
appointed John Carroll Bishop and Pastor of the 
Church of Baltimore, and clothed him with the 
commission to institute a body of clergy deputed 
to divine worship, to establish an episcopal semi- 
nary in Baltimore or elsewhere, and to administer 
ecclesiastical incomes. Up to this time the body 
of the clergy was composed exclusively of ex- 
Jesuits. Now the See of Baltimore began to at- 
tract to it other priests both secular and regular. 
They came in considerable numbers, utterly un- 
acquainted, as they necessarily were, with the 
course of events prior to the erection of the see, 
and as books were scarce, they had no ready means 
of acquainting themselves with the struggles of the 
mission in colonial times and, after the suppression 
of the Society, to preserve the farms of the hunted 
Jesuits. The proceedings of the various Chapters 
at Whitemarsh were as a sealed book to the new- 
comers. These in their very nature were confi- 
dential proceedings, and even down to the present 
age they have been and still are very imperfectly 
understood. 

It was not surprising, therefore, that the priests 
then arriving from Europe accepted the situation 

57 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

as they found it. The temporahtles they deemed 
to be vested by law in the Corporation of Roman 
Cathohc Clergymen by an absolute title ; the 
Jesuits had been suppressed and were not restored, 
and the Holy Father had clothed the Bishop of 
Baltimore with authority to administer ecclesiasti- 
cal incomes. They naturally believed that the 
estates in Maryland were the property of the Bishop 
and corporation of secular clergy, and not of the 
Jesuits, whose order had long been extinguished 
by a brief of the Holy See. So, at least, thought 
Archbishop Marechal, and so, perhaps, thought his 
friend. Bishop England, who came to this coun- 
try at a later day. During the last decade of the 
eighteenth and the first few years of this century 
the title to those farms of Fathers White, Copley, 
Hunter, and their fellow-martyrs and apostles of 
the Jesuit Society during the golden age of Mary- 
land, provoked much controversy, a little vexation, 
and some acrimony. Three eminent lawyers were 
finally retained by the sensible Archbishop Whit- 
field (how much disedification would have been 
avoided had it been done sooner !) to straighten out 
the legal tangle in business affairs and matters of 
purely worldly concern, complications which are 
incident alike to saints and to sinners. The law- 
yers thus wisely consulted were Roger B. Taney, 
then Attorney-General of Maryland and later Chief 
Justice of the United States ; John Scott, a Balti- 

58 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

more jurist, father of Judge T. Parkin Scott ; and 
William George Read, of Baltimore, orator of the 
Philodemic Society in 1842, at the first celebration 
of the Landing of the Pilgrims. 

Bishop Carroll, who had followed the progress 
of the efforts to save the Jesuit farms from the 
beginning, and knew more about the equities in- 
volved than any other man in America, at length, 
on the 21st of June, 1805, quietly, without much 
noise, revived the ancient Society in this country, 
with the co-operation of Father Gruber in far-off 
Russia, where, protected by the Empress Catherine, 
as also happened in the dominions of Frederick the 
Great, the Jesuits never had been affected by the 
suppression. On that day Bishop Carroll appointed 
Father Molyneux Superior of the Society of Jesus in 
the United States, with the powers of a Provincial. 

" The Society of Jesus," says Dr. John Gilmary 
Shea, " in Maryland and Pennsylvania then re- 
entered into possession of the property which had 
been preserved. It was, however, agreed between 
Bishop Carroll and Father Molyneux that 'the 
annuity allotted to the Bishop from the estates 
of the Society or Corporation shall continue per- 
petual and inalienable, and an authentic instrument 
of writing to that effect shall be executed.' " * 



* Shea's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, pp. 525, 
526. 

59 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Guarded from Protestant spoliation by honor- 
able Protestants, and from Catholic alienation by 
the Corporation of Catholic Clergymen and their 
unselfish Bishop, the patrimony of the Jesuits was 
restored to them, and the future of Georgetown 
College assured. 

Father Ambrose Marechal, the learned and pious 
Sulpitian priest, teacher of the first class of phi- 
losophy at Georgetown, and third Archbishop of 
Baltimore, stoutly maintained the opinion that the 
old Jesuit farms belonged to his Archdiocese, and 
not to the restored order. He was a thorough 
Frenchman, zealous, holy, and impulsive. Father 
William Matthews, President of Georgetown when 
ex-President George Washington paid his memo- 
rable visit to the College, was a Charles County 
cavalier of character equally positive as the pro- 
nonce Marechal, and, holding to the Jesuit side of 
the controversy, he opposed to the Gallic impetu- 
osity of his former professor of philosophy an up 
and down Harry Hotspur spirit which once led to 
an amusing war of words between them over the 
crops in the ground at Whitemarsh, and on another 
occasion sent him in hot haste to the State Depart- 
ment to ask John Ouincy Adams not to allow the 
holy prelate to take him by surprise. 

The climax was finally reached when the former 

professor, now become Archbishop, went to Rome 

and laid claim in 1822 not only to the crops, but 

60 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

to the plantation of Whitemarsh itself. If, like 
his prudent successor, he had turned over these 
things to the lawyers. Archbishop Marechal would 
have avoided snags, or as Shakespeare phrases it, 
those " nice, sharp quillets of the law," with which 
the authorities at Rome ought not to have been 
pestered and embarrassed. It was a pure question 
for lex loci adjudication. Title to land in Maryland 
must be settled in the courts of Maryland; to 
them alone belongs original jurisdiction in every 
such controversy. The Archbishop petitioned the 
Pope to take away Whitemarsh from the Jesuits, 
and transfer it to the See of Baltimore. As Arch- 
bishop Marechal and Father Charles Neale, Su- 
perior of the Jesuits, were both citizens of Mary- 
land, they should have fought out their battle as 
plaintiff and defendant in an action of ejectment 
in the Circuit Court of Prince George's County, 
Maryland, in which county the plantation is situ- 
ated. If not satisfied with the judgment there, 
the losing party would have the right of appeal to 
the Court of Appeals at Annapolis, where the con- 
test could be brought to an affirmance or reversal 
of the judgment of the court below, and if the 
remittitur was in favor of the Archbishop, all that 
remained to do would be to enter up final judg- 
ment in the Court of Prince George's, and send 
the sheriff to eject Father Neale, provided he 
proved recalcitrant. The Holy Father could not 

6i 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

be expected to be learned in the law of real prop- 
erty in Maryland, but with all that native benignity 
and mildness which Sir Thomas Lawrence has im- 
mortalized on canvas, he entertained the petition of 
Archbishop Marechal, and that excellent prelate 
— nullus clericus nisi causidicus — pleaded his own 
case, in spite of the wise rule against the choice 
of such a lawyer, and bungled it sadly. 



62 



CHAPTER III 

PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF EARLY DISPUTES THE COL- 
LEGE FIRMLY ESTABLISHED 

HIS Grace's first plea was that the Brief erect- 
ing the See of Baltimore vested in Bishop 
Carroll all the estates of the old Maryland 
Jesuits. Per contra^ in a note addressed to the 
trustees of those estates, dated May 26, 1790, 
Bishop Carroll had distinctly renounced any such 
claim by virtue of that Brief. The Brief com- 
missioned the Bishop " to administer ecclesiastical 
incomes." Not another word occurs in it upon 
the subject of property or revenues. Archbishop 
Marechal next cited the act of December 23, 1 792, 
by which the Maryland Legislature created the 
Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen. He 
held that this act granted the entirety of the said 
estates to the Bishop and secular clergy. This ex- 
traordinary assumption was a misconception both 
of the scope of the act and the power of the Leg- 
islature. It was an enabling act which permitted 
one set of trustees to convey the Jesuit estates to 
another set of trustees for the uses already in ex- 
istence. It would have been ultra vires for the 
Legislature to go further. No new beneficiaries 

63 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

were created by the act of the Legislature. All 
the members of the corporation were former 
Jesuits, who had already declared their purpose to 
return the property in their hands to the Jesuit 
Society, if restored. 

The third plea of his Grace was a reference to 
a certain formal instrument dated September 20, 
1805, by the terms of which the Superior of the 
Jesuits, Father Molyneux, covenanted to pay to 
Right Rev. John Carroll the perpetual yearly sum 
of one thousand dollars. I am not aware that his 
Grace further informed the Holy See that this al- 
leged annuity to Dr. Carroll was in favor of one 
entitled as a former faithful Jesuit to some interest, 
support in old age, and other benefits out of the 
Jesuit property, by the terms of one of the articles 
of agreement entered into by the Body of Clergy 
at Whitemarsh. Neither did the pleadings, as far 
as I know, disclose the fact that such annuity was 
promised in consideration of the transfer to the 
Jesuits of all their old estates, among which 
Whitemarsh was included. But in addition to 
these equities of the case, a sufficient objection in 
law was interposed by Father Neale, who an- 
swered that the Jesuit Society had no legal status 
in 1805, as the Pope did not restore it until 1814; 
its revival by Father Carroll in 1805 was limited; 
that the act of Father Molyneux in that year was 

the act of an individual, and as such it was not of 

64 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

binding effect in law upon the Society at a later 
date. 

Finally, his Grace set up an adverse possession 
or right to Deer Creek and Whitemarsh in the 
Catholic Church, but as the only Catholic Church 
in Maryland was that of the Jesuits during colo- 
nial days, and as the Chapters of the Body of 
Clergy since that period recognized the right of 
the Jesuits to recover all the estates, including 
Whitemarsh, formerly held by them in Maryland, 
this adverse claim of the Catholic Church was too 
vague to be traced, jurisdiction must have its limits 
somewhere, and too indefinite, coram non judice^ to 
be considered in any forum. 

The Pope referred the claim to a commission 
of three Cardinals, Castiglione, Fesch, and della 
Genga, to hear and report. The members of this 
commission were as little acquainted with the pro- 
ceedings of the Chapters of the Body of the 
Clergy at Whitemarsh as was the good Arch- 
bishop himself; no Maryland Jesuit having been 
cited before the commission ad testificandum or to 
produce books, documents, or records duces tecum ; 
they accordingly reported ex parte in favor of the 
Archbishop of Baltimore. Pursuant to the recom- 
mendations of this report the Holy Father, on 
July 23, 1822, directed Father Aloysius Fortis, the 
General of the Society, and through him the 
Maryland Jesuits, to turn over Whitemarsh, or two 
5 65 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

thousand acres thereof free of mortgage incum- 
brances, to the Archbishop of Baltimore. By an 
alternative clause of this decree, if the substitution 
of another plantation for Whitemarsh could be 
shown to produce less hardship, the Jesuits were 
allowed to make representations. In relation to 
the other property of the Jesuits title was quieted, 
and their undisputed possession confirmed. 

When the Brief covering these conclusions of 
the dispute was communicated to Father Charles 
Neale, the Jesuit Superior in Maryland, he prepared 
a protest, in which he pointed out the surreptitious 
nature of the proceedings, the ex parte character of 
the testimony adduced before the commission, and 
the jurisdictional defect of surprise and non-service 
of notice on the Jesuits, who were not allowed to 
present their case before the commission. Father 
Neale answered the most reverend prelate's pleas 
by denying that the Maryland statute created any 
new beneficiaries, by citing Bishop Carroll's renun- 
ciation under the Brief which created the See of 
Baltimore, and by showing the want of legal 
status in Father Molyneux to bind his brethren. 

The Archbishop replied to this protest at great 
length, waxed warm, and wanted the Holy See to 
resort to drastic measures, expel members from the 
Society who refused to yield, and to deprive them 
of the right to leave Maryland without his consent. 
The General of the Society declined to sign the 

66 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

transfer awarded, and the matter dragged on for a 
year or two. But in the interests of peace Father 
Fortis directed the Maryland Fathers to pay to the 
Most Rev. Dr. Marechal one thousand dollars ^^r 
annum, as formerly was allowed to the ex-Jesuit 
Archbishops Carroll and Neale. This mode of 
settlement was disallowed by the Propaganda, and 
an order was issued by it, dated July 26, 1824, 
directing the surrender of Whitemarsh within six 
months to Archbishop Marechal. The old Charles 
County cavalier. Father William Matthews, duo 
fulmina belli^ at this juncture brought the matter to 
the attention of the President of the United States, 
James Monroe. In a letter to Henry Clay, Secre- 
tary of State, written October 10, 1828, about four 
years after the close of the controversy. Father 
Matthews used the following language : " When 
Mr. Adams was Secretary of State, and the case of 
the Archbishop of Baltimore and the Jesuits was 
agitated, I was expressly informed that, whatever 
was written to Rome by one party through the 
State Department, a copy of it would be furnished 
to the other party." * 

An old Jesuit, one of the greatest historical 
scholars I ever knew, once informed me that 
President Monroe, in a most respectful way, sug- 
gested to the Holy See, through an American 



* Works of Bishop England, vol. v. p. 221. 
67 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

minister residing at a leading European court, that 
by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of 
the United States no American citizen can be de- 
prived of life, liberty, or property without due 
process of law. Mr. Monroe acted on this occa- 
sion with great delicacy, for he was not only one 
of the most tolerant men that ever lived, but he was 
very friendly to Catholics, and gave repeated proofs 
of his personal regard for them. When Father 
John Dubois was driven from France by the hor- 
rors of the French revolution, he came a stranger 
to Virginia, where Catholics in the early day re- 
ceived but scant courtesy. Not so with James 
Monroe. He welcomed Rev. Mr. Dubois to 
Richmond, opened his doors to receive him, and 
gave him a home under his own hospitable roof.* 
Not having a church in which to say mass, the 
future founder of Mount Saint Mary's College, 
and the third Bishop of New York, was permitted 
by the State authorities of Virginia, through the 
kind interposition of Mr. Monroe, to have the use 
of one of the rooms in the State Capitol in which 
to celebrate the holy offices of his faith .f 



'^ A Brief Sketch of the History of the Catholic Church on 
the Island of New York, by Rev. J. R. Bayley, p. 83. 

f Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in 
the United States, by Richard H. Clarke, LL.D., vol. i. p. 

418. 

68 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

When ambassador to France, Mr. Monroe 
placed his daughter at school in a convent in that 
country. Thomas Jefferson also, while ambassa- 
dor to the same court, sent his daughter to a 
French convent. Both young ladies applied to 
their fathers for permission to embrace the Catho- 
lic faith, and to enter the religious state. Mr. Jef- 
ferson, without showing opposition to her wishes, 
consummate tactician that he was, quietly with- 
drew his daughter from the convent school, and 
contrived to throw her into the fascinating gaieties 
of the French capital. The whirl of a brilliant 
court sufficed to change her thoughts from spiritual 
to worldly affairs, and we hear no more of her 
leanings to Catholicity. Mr. Monroe, on the con- 
trary, assumed not the dread responsibility of in- 
terfering in so delicate a matter. Miss Monroe, 
with her father's entire approval, became a Catho- 
lic, and died a holy, edifying religieuse in France.* 
May not her prayers, as the late James A. Mc- 
Master observed, have influenced the conver- 
sion of her nephew, the brilliant Colonel James 
Monroe, who died in the service of his coun- 
try at Harper's Ferry, and of his pious brother 
Frank, who died a Jesuit priest in the city of 
New York? 



^ Catholic Mirror, July 29, 1882. Randall's Life of Jef- 
ferson, vol. i. p. 538. 

69 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

After Mr. Monroe's delicate and friendly sug- 
gestion in relation to the Whitemarsh farm was 
received in Rome, the Holy Father, as " arbitrator" 
' (Bishop England uses this designation), promptly 
recognized its inestimable value as an aid to his 
own sound judgment in reaching a proper solution 
of the controversy. The matter was soon accom- 
modated, and the risk of infringing on American 
law — a purpose which the Holy See had never in 
the remotest degree entertained — was very happily 
avoided. Pius VIL advised those in charge of the 
business at Rome that the offer of Father General 
Fortis to pay Archbishop Marechal from the 1st 
day of November, 1826, annually during his natural 
life eight hundred Roman crowns ought to be ac- 
cepted, and Cardinal Somaglia notified the Most 
Reverend Archbishop of Baltimore that the Pope 
and the Sacred Congregation were of opinion and 
recommended that this adjustment and offer ought 
not to be refused by his Grace.* 

Thus ended a very vexatious dispute, by the 
exercise of the good sense and good feeling of all 
the parties involved in it. 

I have made a diligent search for the letters 
which may have passed between Rome and Wash- 
ington during the pendency of the controversy. 



* Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United 
States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 71. 

70 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

and incline to the opinion that no documents on 
the subject are among the files of the State Depart- 
ment. Bishop England once made the same in- 
vestigation that I have since made. Mr. Daniel 
Brent, a confidential clerk there at the time that 
John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State, during 
James Monroe's two administrations, told the dis- 
tinguished Bishop of Charleston, whose words I 
quote, as follows : " Mr. Brent said that Mr. Har- 
old was under a mistake regarding the interference 
of that department in the differences between the 
Archbishop and the Jesuits : and that there were no 
documents upon that subject in the department." * 
For some length of time I surmised that Mr. Brent 
employed diplomatic reserve in this statement, but 
I have come to think differently. I once made 
careful search through Mr. Adams's voluminous 
" Memoirs and Diary," in twelve large octavo vol- 
umes, but could not find a word on this subject. I 
am now of opinion that John C. Calhoun, Secretary 
of War in James Monroe's cabinet, and not John 
Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, first brought 
the subject to the President's notice. My reasons 
are these : an opinion prevailed, which I think was 
erroneous, that Mr. Adams had prejudices against 
Catholics. " Bitter and violent denunciations of 
the Catholic Church," says Dr. John Gilmary Shea, 

* Works of Bishop England, vol. v. p. 228. 
71 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

" its clergy and laity, pullulated in almost every- 
thing written by Mr. Adams." * 

It is only justice to Mr. Adams to say, whatever 
may have been his utterances which led to such an 
opinion, that his conduct to the Jesuits, when he 
was minister to Russia, was most civil and obliging ; 
and his treatment of Father McElroy, when that 
pious Father visited him in the State Department 
to obtain passports for the six young scholastics 
who went from the College to Rome in 1820, — 
Mulledy, McSherry, Smith, Pise, Ryder, and Fen- 
wick, — was courteous and decidedly friendly. 
Father McElroy, in his diary for 1820, says, — 

" June 2. — ^ Waited with the above young men 
on the Secretary of State to obtain passports; 
were received with great kindness by Mr. Adams, 
who offered to write introductory letters to the 
different consuls ; and Daniel Brent, his chief clerk, 
wrote also to the consul at Gibraltar." 

I have heard old Jesuits say that Mr. Calhoun, 
who lived in Georgetown at that period, in an 
elegant mansion on the Heights, often inter- 
changed neighborly courtesies with them, and 
seemed to take much pleasure in his visits to the 
College. He would go there to talk science with 
Father Levins, the distinguished mathematician, to 



^ Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United 
States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 104. 

72 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

whom he offered a professorship at West Point ; 
and to discuss philosophy with Father Dziero- 
zinski, a famous disciple of the Angelic Doctor 
and Aristotle. Father Curley once related anec- 
dotes to that most excellent man, Father John S. 
Sumner, peace to his ashes, and to myself of these 
visits of Mr. Calhoun, and of his fondness for talk- 
ing metaphysics with the learned Russian Father 
of the jaw-breaking name. 

It seems to me more probable that the Jesuits 
should have sought to reach the President through 
one so near to him and so friendly to them as Mr. 
Calhoun, rather than through Mr. Adams, who, 
while treating Jesuits with great respect, was not on 
terms of social intimacy with them. Adams had 
great pugnacity in his make-up, while Calhoun 
was renowned for his urbanity. For these reasons 
I think the Whitemarsh controversy was brought 
to the President's notice by the South Carolina 
statesman. Mr. Brent's denial that there were any 
papers on the subject in the State Department 
negatively strengthens my opinion. 

Archbishop Marechal always felt a sincere in- 
terest in the College. In a letter to the Propa- 
ganda, written about this period, he said, " There 
exists at Georgetown a magnificent College which 
is directed by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. 
It is greatly to be regretted that it is burthened 
with debt. But as the Society has recently recov- 

73 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

ered all its estates and other • property, which was 
held by the Jesuits before the destruction of the 
Society, it will undoubtedly soon be very well en- 
dowed. There is no part of the Catholic world 
in which the Society of Jesus can exist more se- 
curely, labor more widely, and produce richer 
fruit."* 

The distinguished professor of the first class of 
philosophy taught at Georgetown still had a warm 
place in his heart for the old institution. 

Congress raised the College to the rank of a 
University in 1815, and President Madison signed 
the bill on March 1 of that year. It was, however, 
a clumsy act, and conceded authority merely to 
confer degrees, leaving the College as it was before, 
an association of private individuals organized in 
Maryland during the last century under the gen- 
eral power applicable to schools. Mr. Gaston pre- 
sented the petition, evidently not written by him, 
as he was too good a lawyer to have omitted from 
the prayer those clauses necessary to create the 
College a body politic and corporate with a seal. 
The application was barely for leave to confer 
degrees, a permissive prayer. The bill brought 
in by the Committee on the District of Columbia 
was laconically responsive to the petition, granting 
what was asked for and no more. This defect was 



* Shea's History of Georgetown College, p. 54. 

74 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

cured by a further bill introduced in the Senate by 
Hon. Jacob W. Miller, of New Jersey, Chairman 
of the Standing Committee on the District of 
Columbia, on January 22, 1844, by which body 
it was passed on February 28. Senator William 
D. Merrick, of Maryland, brother-in-law of Father 
William Matthews, was a member of this Com- 
mittee, and probably the manager and advocate of 
the bill. He was the father of three noted alumni 
of the College, William M., Richard T., and George 
C. Merrick. I once spent an afternoon with the 
venerable Senator at Gadsby's Hotel in Washing- 
ton, a famous hostelry there in old times. I was 
struck with the likeness between the father and his 
eldest son, the late Judge William Matthews Mer- 
rick. The judge was taller, however, than his 
father. George C. Merrick, my close friend and 
schoolmate when we were little boys at George- 
town in the early fifties, was the youngest son of 
the Senator. I called on him with George from 
the College on the occasion mentioned, when he 
told me that his father had just arrived from his 
country-seat, and the son invited me to join him 
in the visit. Mr. Merrick had then retired from 
the Senate, and was a very old gentleman. George 
is the only survivor of this distinguished family, 
and, coming by talents naturally, is an able judge 
in Prince George's County, Maryland. After 
passing the Senate the bill incorporating the Col- 

75 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lege was sent to the House for concurrence. On 
May 14, Hon. John Campbell, of South Carolina, 
moved to take up the bill, and the motion prevailed. 
It was read through by the Clerk of the House, 
and after some remarks by Hon. Charles Jared 
Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, whether in favor of or 
in opposition to the measure the Globe does not 
disclose, it was laid aside. Mrs. Sarah Mynton 
Maury, in her volume called " The Statesmen of 
America in 1846," observes that Mr. Ingersoll 
knew and admired many Catholic prelates, and 
when in Washington dined occasionally with the 
Jesuits at Georgetown College. The inference is 
that his remarks on this occasion were favorable. 
The bill finally passed the House on May 25, 
and was signed by President Tyler on June 10, 
1844. 

The act created the President and Directors of 
Georgetown College, who were James Ryder, 
Thomas Lilly, Samuel Barber, James Curley, and 
Anthony Rey, into a body politic and corporate 
with a common seal, with perpetual succession in 
law and in equity, to receive and to hold, for the 
use of the College, estates real, personal, and mixed, 
and to grant, sell, and convey the same for the use 
of the said College, and by the same name to sue 
and be sued, with the usual rights, privileges, and 
duties pertaining to similar incorporated bodies. 

The annual net income of an eleemosynary char- 

76 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

acter, which the Maryland Legislature originally 
allowed the College to receive in donations in any 
one year, was increased from four thousand dollars 
to fifty thousand dollars, over and above and ex- 
clusive of educational receipts. 

Going back a few years, I also find that the 
Church added its recognition to that of American 
law-makers. Pope Gregory XVL, on the 30th of 
March, 1833, by a gracious decree granted to the 
College at Georgetown the power and right to 
confer degrees in philosophy and theology, which 
formerly enured to all Jesuit colleges by the Briefs 
of Julius in. in 1552 and Pius IV. in 1561. 
Georgetown College then enjoyed the distinction 
of being the only college in the United States thus 
publicly recognized by the Holy See. Its doctor- 
ate is highly prized among theologians and divinity 
students. 

John Carroll, founder of the College, was the 
son of Daniel Carroll, the Marlborough Irish mer- 
chant, whose father, Charles, held high stations in 
Ireland under James II. and in Maryland under 
Lord Baltimore ; and of Eleanor, daughter of Henry 
Darnall, a distinguished name among the early Pil- 
grims, whose seat of Woodyard was the Brundu- 
sium of the old Catholic cavaliers of Maryland. 
Woodyard was the safe refuge of proscribed 
Jesuits when such saints as Father George Hunter 

77 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lived in the land, and people told of angel visitants 
to his abode.* 

The blood of Celt and Pilgrim, of faith and 
piety, flowed in the veins of the future first Arch- 
bishop. The parents of Eleanor Darnall, of Wood- 
yard, Maryland, like those of Margaret Sharpe, of 

* Father Stonestreet, in The Messenger of the Sacred Heart 
(xxii. p. 609), relates the story handed down, of the two young 
men who vanished from sight after guiding Father Hunter into 
Virginia and back again to his home in Maryland. " The 
Virginia side," says Dr. Shea, in his Life of Archbishop Car- 
roll (p. 87), "was one of great danger. It is said that Father 
Frambach, from Frederick, visited it only by night, and slept 
beside his horse, ready to mount and put him to his full speed 
at the slightest warning ; and that more than once the bullets 
of the pursuers whistled around the head of the devoted priest, 
for whose blood men were thirsting in their hatred of the 
Church of the Living God. By the firesides of Catholic 
Maryland was long told how the great Father George Hunter, 
whose reputation for sanctity was general and enduring, was 
once summoned at night by two young men, who guided him 
to the Potomac, ferried him over by quick and noiseless strokes 
of the oars, then galloped with him to the cottage on horses 
ready for them. After the dying Catholic had been prepared 
by all the blessed means the Church aiFords for the terrible 
hour, his mysterious guides conducted the good priest down 
the Virginia roads, across the Potomac, to his own door, and 
there in the bright moonlight vanished utterly from sight. 
No such youths were known among the Catholics on either 
side of the river. That good Father Hunter believed them to 
have been angels sent to guide him to a soul whose prayers 
had reached the throne of God has ever since been the tradi- 
tion in Maryland." 

78 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Cumberland, England, sent her to a French convent 
in quest of education denied to her in her native 
land, for in Catholic France could be obtained the 
training described by Saint Basil, where the torch 
was first trimmed at the altar before it lighted the 
way among the spoils of Egypt. 

The mother forms the child. Like Gaston, the 
son of Margaret Sharpe, Carroll, the son of Eleanor 
Darnall, showed his gentle blood in courtly manners 
and aristocratic tastes. At Wardour Castle, among 
lords and gentlemen of high degree, and beneath 
the roof-tree of Washington, the noblest Roman 
of them all, he breathed an atmosphere in which 
he was perfectly at home. But at Bohemia Manor, 
Saint-Omer, Liege, Whitemarsh, and in the archi- 
episcopal palace of Baltimore, he had learned and 
practised the precepts taught in the Institute of 
Saint Ignatius, the lessons of poverty, chastity, and 
obedience. He was a Jesuit of the Jesuits. Rising, 
like Antaeus, from the more than Herculean stroke 
of suppression which laid his order in the dust, he 
became the twofold founder of the American Church 
and of its first American College. When the day 
was far spent and his course nearly run, glad tidings 
of great joy under the seal of the Fisherman reached 
him, the voice of Peter speaking through the lips 
of Pius VII. : " We hereby expressly and specially 
repeal the brief of Clement XIV., of happy memory, 
beginning Dominus et Redemptor nosterT 

79 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Archbishop Carroll felt himself again a Jesuit, 
blessing God, whose mercy is forever and ever, 
ready to lay down the mitre, and once more put 
on the black gown of his dear order. He had 
wished to follow the example of the Bishop of 
Verona and resign the burden of his great ofBce. 
" Can I promote the honor of God more," said he, 
"by relinquishing than by retaining it'?" Thus 
he wrote to Father Marmaduke Stone ten years 
before, when the Society of Jesus was slowly re- 
viving. In the same letter he added these words, 
touching the controversy which I have already 
referred to in the preceding pages : " Into whose 
hands," said Bishop Carroll, " could the Diocese 
be committed, who would not perhaps thwart the 
establishment of the Society, and oppose the re- 
investment in it of the property formerly possessed 
and still so providentially retained^ These con- 
siderations have hitherto withheld my coadjutor 
and myself from coming to a resolution of return- 
ing to the Society." * 

The order was restored on the 7th of August, 
1814. Willingly, even then, would he have re- 
signed his See and gone to Georgetown, which he 
had founded, seeking readmission as a simple 
Jesuit. But it was too late. Born January 8, 
1 735, he would be eighty years old in five months 



* Shea's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, p. 521. 

80 




ARCHBISHOP JOHN CARROLL 

Founder of Georgetown College 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

from the date of the restoration. He would not 
be a burden even in the house of Loyola. It was 
not long before the end came. 

Attended by Father Grassi, a holy Jesuit of 
Georgetown College, to whom among his latest 
utterances he expressed his exceeding joy that his 
See was under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary, and by which Father he was tenderly pre- 
pared for a happy death, John Carroll, the first 
Archbishop of Baltimore, honored of men and a 
favorite of heaven, departed this life at six o'clock 
in the morning, the Angelus hour, on Sunday, 
the 3d of December, 1815. 

Archbishop Leonard Neale, the coadjutor who 
had wished to return to the Society with the vener- 
ated Carroll, succeeded him in the See of Baltimore. 
He supplemented his predecessor's transfer to the 
Jesuits of their farms in 1805 by a formal assign- 
ment to the Order, now fully restored and rehabili- 
tated throughout the world, of all their ancestral 
estates in Maryland, — a sacred inheritance trans- 
mitted from apostles and martyrs, and providen- 
tially rescued from Protestant confiscation on the 
one hand, and the mailed hand of Bourbon robbers 
on the other. 

The agreement by which was carried out this 

most equitable redemption was executed on the 

3d of April, 1816, by an instrument in writing to 

which the parties were Leonard Neale, Archbishop 
6 Si 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

of Baltimore, for himself and on behalf of the 
Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen of 
Maryland, parties of the first part, and John An- 
thony Grassi, S. J., Superior of the Maryland Mis- 
sion and President of Georgetown College, for the 
Society of Jesus, party of the second part.* 

In his " History of the College," referring to 
the years preceding the date of this agreement, 
Dr. Shea says (p. 43), " The College, in its an- 
nouncements at this time, was said to be under the 
direction of ' The Incorporated Catholic Clergy- 
men of Maryland.' " With his characteristic close 
scrutiny of important facts, the learned doctor had 
no further occasion, after 1816, to note that de- 
scriptive phrase. 

Thenceforward it was a Jesuit College, of which 
Andrew White was pioneer, John Carroll was 
founder, and Leonard Neale the final restorer. 

* Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United 
States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 31. 



82 



CHAPTER IV 

REMINISCENCES OF THE ERA OF DR. RYDER, THE 
PRIDE OF THE MARYLAND PROVINCE 

1 BEG AN my life among the Jesuits, and sup- 
pose I will continue among them or near to 
them to the end. A saint of the Order baptized 
me in infancy, a blessing for which I can never be 
sufficiently grateful. This was Father Dubuisson, 
who had seen life in the wars of Napoleon near to 
the person of the emperor, but he became admon- 
ished by the imprisonment of Pius VII. that the 
military staff of the Little Corsican was no place 
for a good Catholic. He accordingly threw up 
his commission, and, having still a taste for fighting, 
joined the advance guard of the Church militant, 
the followers of St. Ignatius. Well authenticated 
miracles took place at his and Prince Hohenlohe's 
joint intercession, the details of which are related 
by Bishop England. 

When I was a little boy not yet in my teens, 
my father having gone to California with the Argo- 
nauts, my mother, on the 1 2th of March, 1851, took 
me up to Georgetown College and entered me a 
full-fledged student. Whew ! how important it 

83 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

all seemed ! In the absence of Father Ryder, the 
President, Father Lynch, the Vice-President, re- 
ceived me ; but when I said good-by to my mother, 
and saw her carriage roll away out of the big gate, 
I sat down on the porch of the North Building 
utterly frightened and desolate, and shed the first 
bitter tears of my life. There were several people 
walking about in strange black gowns and three- 
cornered little caps, each wearing a girdle of beads 
around the waist with a big medal pendant. One 
of them came over to console me, and soon an- 
other joined us. The first was Father Ardia, who 
had the most heavenly eyes I ever saw ; the other 
was Father Curley, who told me he was well ac- 
quainted with my grandfather and great-grand- 
father, the latter then long since dead, and made 
me dry my eyes and forget my sorrow by talking 
about everybody at home like one of the family. 
Presently Father Lynch returned with Davy Hub- 
bard, a collegian, and Brother Billy Smith, the dor- 
mitorian. The latter took away my trunk, and 
Davy Hubbard, a student from Alabama, became 
my constant companion for the next three days, 
inducting me into the mysteries of college life. 
Davy and I went immediately around the Walks, 
where we met another student, Jimmie Randall, 
author in after-years of the famous war song " Mary- 
land, my Maryland," performing the same agreeable 

duties of socius for another new-comer. 

84 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

My first teacher was Mr. Shyne, a layman, who 
presided over second and third rudiments. Having 
just been promoted from the nursery, I entered 
third rudiments, a class not usually included in the 
College course ; but Father Ryder had come back 
recently from Mexico with two or three tots in his 
train from the land of the Monte zu mas, and this 
a b c class for them and me was started under Mr. 
Shyne. I recall the name of only one of those 
little boys, — Isidore Sota, from Orizaba, Mexico, 
with whom I became a fast friend. He went home 
with me to Alexandria for the Easter holidays, and, 
if still in the land of the living, he may remember 
how he cried and carried on when the day arrived 
for our return to College and the irksome tasks of 
short division and the spelling-book. I was soon 
promoted to second rudiments, and after vacations 
in '51 I came back and entered first rudiments, 
then taught by that formidable man, Mr. James 
McGuigan, S.J. Thomas E. Waggaman, a well- 
known citizen and art collector of Washington, 
was a classmate of mine at this time. Mr. Mc- 
Guigan believed implicitly in Solomon's injunction, 
" He that spareth the rod hateth his son." Once 
he took me out of class and gave me a sound 
whipping with the cat-o'-nine-tails. How it stung, 
and how mad I got I It was very cold weather, 
and the canal was frozen from Georgetown to 
Alexandria. I strapped on my skates, and it was 

85 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

not long before I reached home, a veritable run- 
away from College bounds and discipline. Ex- 
pulsion, thought I, was an inevitable certainty ; 
and so indeed it would have been had not Father 
Stonestreet been President, a former pastor of St. 
Mary's Church at Alexandria, who, on account 
of my extreme juvenility and his warm personal 
attachment to the old folks at home, imposed a 
proper penance on the contumacious rebel, and re- 
admitted me to the College. Father Charles H. 
Stonestreet, an apostolic son of the Pilgrims, was 
a preux chevalier in every fibre. But that whipping 
did the business for me. Talk about it as we may, 
I am thoroughly persuaded that Mr. McGuigan's 
cats made a new man of me. From that day on- 
ward I became the closest student in a class of 
thirty or forty boys, and took the silver medal at 
the next commencement. 

Mr. McGuigan once rescued Father James 
Clark from a sharp assault by a prominent gentle- 
man of Georgetown, whose little son the Father 
had punished for some infraction of College rules. 
Father Clark had been a West Pointer, a dashing 
officer in the Florida war, and was perhaps as in- 
capable of fear as any man alive, but when attacked 
with a cane by the Georgetown man, the old Adam 
flashed .in his eye and face, and for one moment it 
looked like as pretty a fight as one could desire ; 
when lo ! the Jesuit got the better of the grim 

86 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

soldier, and Father Clark calmly folded his arms 
and gave the assailant full scope for his splenetic 
rage. But Mr. McGuigan happened to be present, 
and, not yet having taken religious vows which 
would bind him over to keep the peace under all 
circumstances, pitched in, snatched the attacking 
party's cane from him, and shook the irate gentle- 
man into his senses, of which be had seemed pre- 
viously to be bereft. Father Clark was a profound 
mathematician, and author of a Differential Calcu- 
lus. He taught First Mathematics when I was a 
member of that class. For him I had a deep 
affection. Jefferson Davis had been a classmate 
of his at West Point, and they were very cordial 
friends. When Secretary of War and United 
States Senator from Mississippi, the future Confed- 
erate President used to visit his old West Point 
crony at the College. Father Clark was a Penn- 
sylvanian and a stanch Union man. " How do 
you like Fort Sumter ?" once asked the celebrated 
Father John Boyce of the Jesuit at a dinner-party 
at the house of the author of" Shandy McGuire," 
pointing to a mound of jelly or ice-cream which 
the confectioner had fashioned into the shape of a 
fort. " I would like it better with the United 
States flag over it," replied Father Clark. 

I went with him in i860 to Harrisburg, where 
a young man was on trial for killing a nephew of 
Father Clark, whom he attacked without warning, 

87 



—<■ 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

through jealousy, a young lady's preference for the 
matrimonial attentions of young Mr. Robinson, the 
name of the victim, being the innocent cause of the 
cowardly and fatal assault. Poor Charles Robinson 
had been a student at Georgetown, where I became 
well acquainted with him. His uncle and myself 
were called as witnesses to his general good charac- 
ter, which was excellent. Murder in the second de- 
gree was the unexpected verdict, brought about by 
the skill of pettifogging lawyers, rather than justice 
and a due execution of the laws, for the crime 
seemed to be a wilful murder, and the victim was 
a good citizen, respected and loved for sterling 
qualities and upright life. 

When Father Clark in after-years became Presi- 
dent of Holy Cross College, at Worcester, Massa- 
chusetts, he appointed me professor of Latin and 
Greek and English literature in that institution, 
where I spent two or three years pleasantly and 
profitably with my old Georgetown professor. He 
was a convert to the Catholic Church, and a truly 
holy man. He was a good executive officer, and 
was President of Gonzaga College at Washington 
after he left Holy Cross. Father Clark died at 
Georgetown College, September 9, 1885. 

During the first century of its existence the 

College has had the services of many noted men 

of science among its professors. Perhaps the most 

distinguished of these were Fathers Wallace, Levins, 

ss 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Secchi, and Curley, although there have been and 
are others of scarcely less repute. Father John G. 
Hagen, the present Director of the Observatory, is 
in the front rank of scientific scholars, not only in 
this country but in Europe ; and Father John T. 
Hedrick, his accomplished assistant, is also a 
scholar of note. 

In the early part of the century there were em- 
ployed in the New York Literary Institution, an 
offshoot of Georgetown, situated on the site of the 
present magnificent St. Patrick's Cathedral, on 
Fifth Avenue, two young teachers of singular 
moral and intellectual merits. One of these young 
men, Thomas Kelly, was very saintly; the other, 
James Wallace, was a decided mathematician. 
They attended St. Peter's Church in Barclay Street, 
where a young widow, Mrs. Seton, also worshipped. 
She was the daughter of a distinguished physician 
of New York, Dr. Richard Bay ley , whose family has 
given two famous converts to the Catholic Church, 
Mother Seton and James Roosevelt Bayley, eighth 
Archbishop of Baltimore. Dr. Richard Bayley 
rendered invaluable public service during the prev- 
alence of yellow fever, and afterwards of ship fever, 
in New York, from the latter of which he died. 
His daughter had married a young New York 
gentleman, William Seton, a descendant of the 
Lords Seton, of Scotland, a family represented in 

the present age by the Earl of Winton, but his 

89 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

early death had left her a widow with five httle 
children to battle with the world alone. She be- 
came a Catholic, turned her back on the world of 
fashion, of which she had been a bright, beautiful 
ornament, and before the altar of St. Peter's heaped 
up riches for herself in heaven. 

The two young tutors formed the acquaintance 
of Mrs. Seton, and a kindred feeling to relieve the 
wants and miseries of the poor made them excel- 
lent friends. To impart the blessings of Catholic 
education, not only to the wealthy classes, such as 
attended their instructions in the Literary Institu- 
tion, but to the poor, the struggling, the many, 
who most needed their aid, this was the gen- 
erous wish of Thomas Kelly and James Wallace. 
To provide for destitute orphans, and stretch out a 
helping hand to the many girls she saw growing 
up in ignorance of their Christian duties, was the 
noble desire of Mrs. Seton, the Madame Le Gras 
of America. The three holy souls often spoke to 
each other of their purposes and aims, and some- 
times met for charitable conferences in the tower 
of St. Peter's Church, like St. Vincent de Paul and 
Madame Le Gras at the College of Bons Enfans 
in Paris. It was finally agreed among them that 
the two young men, as soon as their engagements 
in New York permitted, should go to Georgetown 
and apply for admission among the Jesuits, and 

that Mrs. Seton should go to Baltimore and apply 

90 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

to Archbishop Carroll for regular employment 
among orphan girls in works of charity and educa- 
tion. The Archbishop and Father Dubourg, of St. 
Mary's College, a former President of Georgetown, 
extended to Mrs. Seton a cordial welcome, and after 
she had been for some time in Baltimore, she went 
to Emmittsburg to develop her charitable scheme, 
bearing from the Archbishop and the President of 
St. Mary's College strong letters of approval and 
recommendation to Father John Dubois, Presi- 
dent of Mount St. Mary's College at Emmitts- 
burg. Thus was established in the beautiful Val- 
ley of St. Joseph, nestling among the mountains, 
the Order of Sisters of Charity in the United States. 
The name of Mother Seton, the saintly foundress, 
is enshrined in the hearts of the whole American 
people, regardless of religious differences. On 
battle-field, in the fever-laden atmosphere of hos- 
pitals, in pest-house, the Sisters of Charity have 
become the white-winged angels of the human 
race ; mothers of the motherless, in schools, acad- 
emies, orphan asylums, magdalens, they labor un- 
ceasingly in the very spirit of their founder, that 
most beautiful character in the bead-roll of modern 
apostles. Saint Vincent de Paul. 

The two young levites were received in the 
Jesuit Order, and distinguished themselves, the one, 
Wallace, for extraordinary scientific attainments ; 
the other, Kelly, for Aloysian sanctity, but the 

91 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

span of his life, like that of the patron saint of 
youth, was soon cut short by death. " Some days 
before his death," says Father John McElroy in his 
" Recollections," " he told Mr. Wallace he would 
die on the feast of the Assumption. Mr. Wallace 
thinking him somewhat delirious, turned his head 
and smiled. Mr. Kelly repeated he would find his 
words verified, and asked to be shaved. He con- 
tinued perfectly sensible till the last moment. I 
was at his bedside, with the exception of a few 
moments, until his decease. He begged to be left 
alone to pray, in which he occupied himself with 
most fervent ejaculations, particularly to Jesus and 
Mary. His death, indeed, was that of the just. 
May my last end be like unto his ! He died on 
the very day foretold by him."* Father Grivel, a 
distinguished Jesuit and a very holy man, had a 
similar premonition, I was once informed, of the 
very day of his death. 

" Brother Wallace, a scholastic of the Society," 
writes Father Kohlmann, " is our master of mathe- 
matics, one of the ablest in the United States." 
An anecdote is related of his mathematical knowl- 
edge in an article on Gonzaga College in the 
"Woodstock Letters." M. Pageat, the French 
Ambassador to the United States, was dining one 
day at Washington with Father Matthews, and 

* The Woodstock Letters, vol xix. pp. 1 8 and 19. 

92 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

produced a mathematical problem over which 
European savants had been puzzling their brains, 
and offering prizes for its solution. Father Mat- 
thews proposed to have it solved in two hours by 
Father Wallace of Georgetown College. A mes- 
senger was despatched forthwith to the College, and 
returned before the dinner was over with the prob- 
lem cleared up. " It had taken Father Wallace," 
he said, " but fifteen minutes to solve it." A fine 
collection of scientific works, some of which are 
still in the College Observatory, was shortly after- 
wards presented to Father Wallace by the French 
Academy, — a graceful recognition of his talents. 

Another mathematician of rare ability was 
Father Levins, D.D., who was professor at George- 
town in the twenties. His diary contains an inter- 
esting account of the visit of Lafayette to the 
College in 1824, and of the " squabble" over ban- 
ners between the students of the two Colleges, 
Columbia and Georgetown, at the gates of the 
Capitol, on the occasion of the grand parade in 
honor of the French patriot. His skill as a civil 
engineer was displayed when he was living at New 
York in the great works of the Croton Aqueduct. 
The plans for that marvel of its day, the High 
Bridge over Harlem River, were drawn by Dr. 
Levins. When that most brilliant of all our Sec- 
retaries of War, John C. Calhoun, was building 
up the Military Academy at West Point, he ten- 

93 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

dered the professorship of engineering or mathe- 
matics in that institution to Dr. Levins. This was 
about the time of his retirement from the Society 
in 1824 or 1825. He did not accept Mr. Cal- 
houn's offer, but became pastor of the Cathedral 
under Bishop Dubois at New York. Dr. Levins 
had a Drogheda temper of his own, which some- 
times got him into hot water. Despite this in- 
firmity, which led to his suspension by the spirited 
little French Bishop of New York, he was a good 
man and a true Catholic, and his faculties were re- 
stored to him when Bishop Hughes became coad- 
jutor. Dr. Levins was editor of the Green Banner^ 
one of the best of the early Catholic papers of the 
city of New York. 

But the great scientific scholar among the 
Georgetown professors, as subsequently Father 
Camillus Mazzella, S.J., was the great theologian, 
was that master of physical problems, Father 
Angelo Secchi, S.J. His fame is world-wide ; his 
rank is with Newton, Laplace, and Herschel. The 
student of science will find in Volume XXXII 
of the " Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical So- 
ciety" Father Secchi's beautiful delineation of the 
lunar crater " Copernicus," so named after the 
astronomer of Cracow, which presents a true idea 
of the formation of the surface of the moon. 
Galileo was the first astronomer to gain with his 
telescope a rude idea of the real nature of the 

94 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lunar surface, and he traced in it a striking resem- 
blance to the geography of our own globe. Milton 
adopted the suggestion of Galileo that the brighter 
and rougher portions of the moon might be con- 
tinents, and the dark smooth portions oceans, when 
he depicts the Tuscan artist viewing the moon's 
orb through his optic glass, 

" To descry new lands. 
Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe." 

But the improvements in the power of the tele- 
scope dashed these fine poetical visions, and Father 
Secchi with the polariscope discovered that the 
sun's rays passed through no liquid at the moon's 
surface ; lunar atmosphere he sought in vain ; sup- 
posed volcanoes in the moon he traced to bright 
spots illuminated by light from the earth. The 
fancies of Galileo and Milton faded away under 
the searching eye of Secchi, and the moon's true 
surface is now better known. 

Father Secchi wrote from Rome in 1877 an in- 
teresting paper on the physical constitution of the 
sun for Professor Simon Newcomb's " Astronomy," 
which is published in full in that work, with a 
finely drawn illustration. Fig. 71, of " Secchi's 
Theory of Solar Spots." This celebrated astrono- 
mer came to Georgetown a year or two before I 
entered the College, and resided there a little less 
than twelve months. In speaking of him, Father 

95 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Curley said to a friend, " Father Secchi looked 
very much like Daniel Webster." While he was 
at the College he taught a class of physics, and 
constructed an electrical battery which was exhib- 
ited at the commencement in 1849, ^^^ held up 
sixteen hundred pounds. The magnet I believe 
is still at the College. The " Smithsonian Con- 
tributions to Knowledge" for 1852 contains 
Father Secchi's " Researches in Electrical Rhe- 
ometry," a treatise which attracted no slight 
attention. 

The name of Curley is one of the household 
words of Georgetown College. Mezzofanti's 
knowledge of languages was not more precocious 
than Father Curley's knowledge of faces and 
names. For over fifty years he taught at the Col- 
lege, and I myself have witnessed his recognition 
of old students whom he had not seen for twenty 
or thirty years, as occasion again brought them to 
the College. One student in 1832, Mr. Michael 
Delany, visited the College after almost a half-cen- 
tury of absence, an old man with gray hair. He 
was a little boy Avhen he left, and he relates in a 
letter to the College Journal in 1894 that the good 
old priest recognized him at once, notwithstanding 
the changes which fifty years had made in his per- 
son. Father Curley taught Natural Philosophy 
when I was in that class. Can any old student 

who graduated at Georgetown during his half-cen- 

96 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

tury of teaching say that Father Curley was not ! | 

also his professor, or failed to know him whenever 
he visited the College '? 

Dear old man, simple, holy, learned, I can see 
him still, as he goes forward with his peculiar long 
stride, now to the Convent to say mass for the 
nuns ; now to the greenhouse to tend his beloved 
flowers ; or climbing the hill over by the vineyard 
on his way to the Observatory. I will never for- 
get his appearance one night as he was descending 
the stairs from his bedroom in the North Building. 
He carried a candle in his hand, which pierced the 
surrounding gloom, and gave him a weird look. 
The Philodemic meetings were held in the Philos- 
ophy Room next door to the Library, directly 
under Father Curley's chamber. It was getting on 
towards war times, and everybody was in a bel- 
ligerent mood. Our debate that night was particu- 
larly stormy. Jack Gardiner's stentorian tones had 
penetrated up-stairs to Father Fulton's room next 
door to Father Curley's, and a characteristic mes- 
sage already had been sent down from Father Ful- 
ton : " Ask Mr. Gardiner please not to swear so loud 
in his flights of eloquence." The climax was 
finally reached, and a scene followed not unlike 
some of those then frequently occurring in Con- 
gress, — a free fight. Bill Hodges, of Mississippi, 
who sat next to me, sprang at the Vice-President 
of the Society, James Owen Martin, of Louisiana, 
7 97 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Jack Gardiner, of Maryland, rushed at me. Bob 
Brown, of Mississippi, at Warfield Semmes, of 
Georgetown, and Henry Foote, of Mississippi, was 
rushing Joe Orme, of Washington, eloquently 
along the floor. Jim Dooley, of Virginia, Gus 
Wilson, of Maryland, Jim Hoban and Pres. 
Sands, of Washington, Alphonse Rost, " Sonny" 
Buard, Paul and Placide Bossier, Bob Lovelace, 
and Lassaline Briant, of Louisiana, James L. 
O'Byrne, of Georgia, and many other Philo- 
demics, were mixed up in the melee in inextrica- 
ble confusion, when somebody suddenly put out 
the lights and left us in total, ludicrous darkness. 
A lull in the storm ensued. It was at this mo- 
ment, the door having been opened, that we be- 
held Father Curley in skull-cap descending the 
stairs right in front of us, shading his eyes with 
one hand, and holding a candle above his head in 
the other, as he peered in dubiously to the quarters 
of the contending hosts. He looked like a spectre 
in the darkness, but it was a good spectre after 
all, for the apparition exorcised the spirit of war 
and ended the fracas. Father Early, the Presi- 
dent of the College, sternly prohibited future 
meetings of the Philodemic Society for the rest 
of the year. All appeals of the budding orators 
to be allowed to continue our debates were denied, 
all promises of amendment futile. The genial 
smile of the rector was gone. " I am determined 

98 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

to put a stop to such disgraceful scenes," retorted 
Father Early ; and the fatherly eyes for once 
snapped with fire, and the quivering lips, where so 
much good nature usually hovered, carried the 
menace home to ievery one of us that expulsion 
awaited those who should again get into such a 
chance medley. Claudite fores I and as we walked 
out, bang went the door upon a wiser if not a 
happier set of extinguished orators. 

Father Curley, the learned astronomer, was the 
first director of the Observatory, which the gener- 
osity of Father Stonestreet had enabled him to 
complete. He discovered the true meridian of 
Washington when the reckonings of others were 
all astray. " His first work," says Dr. Shea, in his 
" History of the College," " was to determine ex- 
actly the true meridian ; the Jesuit astronomer 
found that his calculation did not coincide with 
that of the Government Observatory at Washing- 
ton. There was a natural reluctance to admit an 
error in their calculations, but when the laying of 
the first Atlantic cable, in 1858, enabled Ameri- 
can astronomers to revise their observations with 
greater accuracy, the calculations of the George- 
town professor were sustained, and his meridian 
was recognized as correct." 

Father Curley, who was born October 25, 1 796, 
lived to his ninety-third year. Shortly after his 
death, which occurred July 24, 1889, some reminis- 

99 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

cences of him were communicated to the College 
Journal by my father, the late Professor Hugh C. 
McLaughlin, of Rock Hill College, Maryland, 
who had known him since 1831. 

" My last interview with the venerable Jesuit," 
he says, " took place on the 25th of June of the 
present year, the day of the annual commence- 
ment of Georgetown College. In company with 
my son and grandson, I was conducted to Father 
Curley's chamber in the Infirmary by Rev. Father 
Richards, S.J., President of the College. The 
meeting was a touching one. Memories of long 
ago were revived, names of departed ones who had 
figured in college life over fifty years before were 
recalled. The Georgetown of the Dzierosinskys, 
Dubuissons, Mulledys, Fenwicks, and Ryders again 
rose before our vision, and wonderful it was to me 
to hear the aged priest, almost a centenarian, as 
he peopled the place with its ancient giants, and 
dwelt upon some characteristic incident in the life 
of each one of them with a recollection that was 
indeed extraordinary and surprising. Pointing to 
my son, whom he had taught, and to my grand- 
son, Father Curley said, ' Here are three genera- 
tions of your family present, but I was well ac- 
quainted with two more generations before you, — 
Mr. Edmund Sheehy, your wife's father, and Mr. 
Edward McLaughlin, her grandfather, — and visited 

them at their homes in Alexandria before you 

100 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

were married.' As clear as the mind was, I saw 
that the enfeebled frame was almost at its journey's 
end, and so did not prolong my visit. ' Bless the 
three generations that yet survive, venerable father,' 
I said, as I took his hand for the last time ; and as 
we all knelt down in front of the arm-chair in which 
he sat, the holy priest raised his arm over us, and, 
resting his hand successively on our heads, invoked 
the blessing of God with affectionate fervor upon 
myself, my son, and my grandson." 

I remember the first time I ever saw Father 
Ryder, " the pride of the Maryland Province," as 
he was justly called, and the impression he made 
on me continues to this day. It was a year or 
two before I went to the College, and although I 
was a little child, I distinctly recollect his arrival 
one day at my father's house in Upper Marlboro, 
Maryland, in company with Father Peter O'Flan- 
agan, S.J., the beloved pastor of Trinity Church, 
Georgetown. 

Father Ryder's ability as a preacher made him 
a favorite everywhere throughout the Union, and 
his services were constantly sought after in the 
pulpit or on the platform, and even before Con- 
gress, where his discourse upon the late Repre- 
sentative Bossier, in presence of the great officers 
of government, the diplomatic corps, and a large 
throng of people, won plaudits from such men as 
Clay, Preston, and Calhoun. Indeed, he was re- 

lOI 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

garded as a second Bishop England on account of 
the splendor of his eloquence, his depth of theo- 
logical learning and general scholarship. Over- 
flowing crowds, as formerly in the case of the 
Bishop of Charleston, or at a later day in that of 
Father Tom Burke, gathered to hear Father Ryder. 
He was born in Dublin in the year 1800, and had 
the rich diction, voice, and intonation peculiar to 
educated men of that city, where the English lan- 
guage is spoken, as scholars remark, with greater 
purity than in any other place in the British Empire. 
His father was a Protestant, who died while his 
son was a child. His mother, who was a Catholic, 
came to America and placed James at Georgetown 
College as a student. This entry occurs in Father 
McElroy's diary: "1813. Jan. 29. This day 
Rev'd F*^ Malone arrived at the College, accom- 
pany'd by Masters Doyle and Ryder ; these two 
make our number of boarders 45." He soon ap- 
plied for admission to the Jesuit Order, and went 
to Whitemarsh to make his noviceship. In 1820 
he was sent to Rome to complete his studies in 
company with several other bright young men, — 
Pise, Fenwick, MuUedy, McSherry, and Smith, — 
nearly all of whom became men of mark in after 
years. Upon finishing his course. Father Ryder 
was appointed Professor of Theology and Sacred 
Scriptures at the University of Spoleto, in Italy, the 

Archbishop of that See then being Cardinal Ferrati, 

1 02 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

afterwards better known to the world as Pope 
Pius IX., a true hero of Christianity as ever lived. 
Between the Cardinal and Dr. Ryder acquaintance 
ripened into the warmest affection ; two such men 
could hardly be together without attracting each 
other, and the friendship continued throughout 
their lives. 

The visit to Upper Marlboro was in conse- 
quence of an unexpected attack upon Dr. Ryder 
by the late James A. McMaster, editor of the New 
York Freeman's Journal^ and shortly afterwards a 
spirited reply under a nom de plume, but written by 
my father, appeared in the Boston Pilot. The 
controversy, as is usual in such cases, waxed warm, 
and Mr. McMaster got it into his head that Dr. 
Ryder was the writer in the Pilot, and so declared. 
The disputants wielded vigorous pens, and charges 
and denials, rejoinders and surrejoinders attracted 
wide attention, and finally got into the New York 
Herald, in which paper the authorship of the letters 
was avowed by my father over his own name. 

Mr. McMaster was a convert, and an excellent 
man, but an extremist. He had criticised the theol- 
ogy of one of Dr. Ryder's sermons, and hence the 
controversy. The elder James Gordon Bennett, 
himself I have heard educated for the Church, 
ridiculed the notions of Mr. McMaster as hyper- 
critical and untenable, and invented the nickname 

of " Abbe McMaster" for him, which stuck to the 

103 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Catholic editor for life. Profoundly versed in the 
schools of St. Thomas, of Bellarmin, of Petavius, 
and of Suarez, Dr. Ryder, who had as little of 
merely human ambition as any man I have ever 
known, felt no concern over a passing criticism of 
his tenets, but as president of the leading Catholic 
College in the country his friends considered it im- 
portant that he should not be placed in a wrong 
light before the public. 

He was temporarily absent, I repeat, from the 
College when my mother took me there to become 
a student, but soon returned, having been away on 
a missionary journey to Charleston and Savannah. 
I had been getting up previously with the other 
boys about five o'clock in the morning, but in 
view of my diminutive size Dr. Ryder sent for 
me one day, and, after some playful remarks upon 
that unconscionable hour, allowed me to sleep two 
hours longer in company with the other little 
shavers, of whom there were seven or eight at the 
College, — the Macedos, Sota, and others. I en- 
joyed the privilege greatly, for tumbling out of 
bed before daylight and hurrying down-stairs to 
the wash-room in the basement, thence across the 
yard in the nipping March air to the study-room 
and chapel in the south row, was not precisely a 
joyous pastime to a certain little boy of my pro- 
clivities. The students went in ranks to the 

chapel, refectory, and dormitory, and when the 

104 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

line was formed all talking was strictly for- 
bidden. 

One night, going up to the dormitory, I broke 
this rule, as I was good deal of a chatterbox. 
Mr. Gentinetta, the prefect, espied me, and when 
I got to the top of the stairs and turned into the 
upper dormitory, a sharp grip of the culprit's ear 
turned my whisper into a screech, " Ouch I that 
hurts," for which double offence of first whispering 
and then yelling out loud I was incontinently 
turned out of the dormitory, and sent about my 
business. Down-stairs near the front door I went, 
and took a seat in the passage on the bench 
between the parlor and museum. Along about 
nine o'clock I heard the President's door open at 
the head of the first flight of stairs, and down the 
steps came Dr. Ryder himself on his way to the 
community chapel in the old building. I began 
to get frightened now. " What are you doing 
here, my child*?" said he. I told the whole story. 
" It is against the rules to talk in ranks, and you 
must not do it any more. Come with me." This 
very paternally. Up the stairs we walked, side by 
side, in perfect silence, one, two, three, four flights, 
to the very top of the North Building. Mr. Gen- 
tinetta was near the door as we went in. The 
President beckoned to him, and as he approached, 
said rather frigidly, in a low tone, "Allow this 

little boy to go to his bed," and departed without 

105 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

another word. I hastened to bed greatly re- 
lieved. 

Some of our most celebrated orators have left 
no written speeches worthy of their fame. Wil- 
liam Pinkney, the greatest lawyer of his age, who 
was described by John Marshall, Joseph Story, 
and Roger B. Taney as eloquent in a transcendent 
degree, has afforded to us no means of judging of 
his powers from his literary remains. The same 
want is felt in the case of Dr. Ryder. He was an 
artist in the use of language in the sense that 
Tennyson and Ruskin are artists, fitting the 
thought in a vesture so suitable that it seemed a 
part of it. I heard him once describe Judas by 
the single word " rascal," and picture with the 
delicacy of Meissonier the whole Grecian and 
Roman civilizations by one adjective for each of 
those mighty races : " the proud Greek and splendid 
Roman." If you attempted to give his thoughts 
in any other language the charm was gone. 
Welded by the Ryder genius, the delicate tracery, 
the cunning joinery must remain as the artist con- 
structed them or they vanished. Yet I was told 
by an old Jesuit that Ryder toiled, and moiled, 
and shed the brine of labor over his books for 
long years, wrote and copied with the zeal of a 
Scriptorian monk, assimilated his style to the best 
models, and wasted the midnight lamp, lim^ labor 
et mora^ in perfecting himself for his after-flight. 

io6 



{ 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

No man could attain to his eminence who did not 
do it. All must do it who would become true 
artists in any field of human endeavor. 

Imagine a reporter following him through the 
dialectics of a syllogism, to which this American 
Bourdaloue was much addicted, the discursive flight 
of his creative imagination, the unexpected transi- 
tion to a pithy epigram, the rapid fire of a summa- 
rized recapitulation, — division, narrative, argument, 
body, soul, and essence of the discourse epitomized 
into a few winged words, — and where would your 
poor reporter be*? I once heard him preach a 
funeral sermon with which the mourners were so 
impressed that one of them prevailed upon me to 
ask the preacher to let them have it for publica- 
tion in pamphlet form. " My dear Jimmie," re- 
plied Dr. Ryder, " it is not in my power to oblige 
our good friends ; the remarks were impromptu. 
I have not written out a sermon during the past 
twenty years." 

Reporters found it exceedingly difficult to fol- 
low him ; not that he was too vehement in man- 
ner, — indeed, he was not so at all, however ve- 
hement the play of mind might be ; but when he 
got well under way he was so magnetic, his idio- 
syncrasy was so very much that of the perfect 
orator, — voice, gesture, eye, train of thought, like 
the limited express at full speed, everything went 

onward with such rapt unity and vim, — that it was 

107 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

next to impossible to report him correctly. His 
strokes were like symphonies of Beethoven, — first 
a single deep one, followed by two, then by three, 
next one again, when the climax came with an 
intense burst of sonorous eloquence. His wit 
and raillery were delicate and incisive, and were 
brought into play with pure Attic expression 
dashed with Irish flavor quite delicious. His logic 
and reasoning power so permeated the whole dis- 
course that I fancy the best short-hand reporter 
would find himself caught in the spell, and before 
he was disenchanted the thread would escape him, 
and his fingers forget their cunning in the best 
parts. 

When the beautiful church of St. Aloysius, in 
Washington, was built, under plans designed by 
Father Sestini, another of Georgetown's brilliant 
scientific scholars and mathematicians, whose ad- 
mirable likeness by Brumidi appears among the 
figures of the altar piece, — the First Communion 
of Saint Aloysius, — the dedication of the church, 
in 1859, ^^^ made an imposing and memorable 
event. The two foremost Catholic orators of the 
country were invited to preach, — Archbishop 
Hughes, of New York, at the High Mass, and 
Dr. Ryder at Vespers. I heard both discourses. 
The church was crowded with distinguished people 
on both occasions. President Buchanan attended 

the morning services, Stephen A. Douglas, the 

loS 




DR. JAMES RYDER, S.J. 
Nineteenth President of Georgetown College 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Little Giant of the Senate, the evening. There 
was great and bitter rivahy at that time for control 
of the Democratic party between the President 
and Senator, and the discord that followed in the 
Charleston Convention of i860 disrupted the 
Democracy, and led to the election of Abraham 
Lincoln. The absence of Mr. Buchanan in the 
evening, when Dr. Ryder preached, was com- 
mented upon at the time by those who were aware 
of the friendship and intimacy which had long 
existed between the two gentlemen. Dr. Ryder, 
I have heard, had once instructed Mr. Buchanan, 
at the latter 's request, in the doctrines of the 
Catholic Church, and my informant said that the 
old statesman had remarked to the priest, as the 
result of these conferences, that all of his doctrinal 
difficulties had been solved save one, — the doctrine 
of transubstantiation, and that if Dr. Ryder could 
demonstrate that cardinal point satisfactorily he 
would have overcome his doubts. Ryder under- 
took the task, and Buchanan, after repeated con- 
ferences between them, after much reading and 
deep weighing of authorities, finally admitted to 
his instructor that he had no other objections to 
offer. Then Dr. Ryder told him he must become 
a Catholic, and Mr. Buchanan procrastinated. 
Ryder became alarmed for his distinguished cate- 
chumen, and frankly told him he could no longer 

plead doubts as to faith, or invincible ignorance, 

109 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

as the theologians call it. Buchanan was not 
pleased at the turn the controversy had taken, but 
Ryder, who was a man of positive character, re- 
doubled his assurances that he was under an impera- 
tive obligation to enter the Church. Mr. Buchanan 
was also a man of positive character, and remarked 
that as he had not decided upon that step, he must 
put it off for future consideration. As Ryder was 
inexorable, Buchanan took offence, and thus the 
two friends parted. 

One New Year's day I met Dr. Ryder at Mr. 
Howell Cobb's reception. Cobb was Secretary of 
the Treasury in Buchanan's administration. We 
left the Secretary's house together, and walked to 
the corner of G and Fifteenth Streets. " I am 
going to the President's, Father Ryder ; are you 
not going there, too V I said. His answer was an 
emphatic " no." It is so long since this occurred, 
about forty years, that it would be idle to attempt 
to give his words, but I well remember that his re- 
fusal to visit the White House was emphatic and 
unmistakable. The estrangement had taken place 
long before the dedication of the Church of St. 
Aloysius, and, of course. President Buchanan was 
not among the orator's hearers. 

Reports of the sermon were published in various 
papers throughout the country, but as usual failed 
to give an adequate idea of the matchless eloquence 
of the orator. There was a practised writer in 

no 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Washington, an old friend of Dr. Ryder, who had 
the temerity to edit the newspaper versions of the 
sermon, having himself heard it, and he brought it 
out in pamphlet shape. But it proved only a half- 
breed. Before sending his notes to the printer he 
submitted them to the orator himself for correction 
and emendation. Dr. Ryder's letter in reply, which 
the editor of the sermon gave to me, is here repro- 
duced for the first time after thirty-nine years' re- 
pose in my scrap-book. The " chaos" of the reports 
is modestly but pungently pointed out by the orator. 

" My dear Friend, — How can I thank you for the kind 
interest you evince and the trouble you have taken to give 
order and light to the chaos perhaps of my thoughts, certainly 
of others' reports ? God, I hope, w^ill reward you. Now, 
as I only received the package this morning (Monday), and 
you wish it to-morrow, I cannot, sick as I still am, undertake 
to do much ; but I will suggest that you change on the first 
page * tasty' into tintSf church into * chair of truth.' In the 
other sentence, the last part should read after sacrifice * offered 
thereon under the forms of bread and wine.' The next sen- 
tence should read thus : * The Catholic heart under these in- 
fluences has expanded, and from the contemplation of the ma- 
terial perfections of this earthly structure easy is the transition 
to the contemplation,' &c., &c. On page 19 (by the bye 
what means such paging ?) erase after the word ' directed' the 
rest of the printed sentence, and place a full-stop after * di- 
rected.^ In place of defence put edifice. In page 20 it were 
well to italicize the notes of the Church, also the word nil in 
the same page, as from it the argument flows : the text also 
should be, * teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you.' On page 25 I put true victim, and 

III 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

make the sentence read, ' who, according to the order of 
Melchisedech, under the appearance of bread and wine, offer 
no other than the sacred body and blood of the Godman.* 
Page 30, after the words who died upon the cross, add * and 
who declared to the world that once elevated upon the igno- 
minious gibbet. He would draw all things to Himself.' In the 
last sentence, instead oi privilege of their compact^ put * approval 
of their creed, and their unwavering faithfulness to the Faith 
they have received will sanctify them to the end of time.' 
** God bless you and yours, and believe me, 
" Most gratefully, 

*• Your friend, 

"J. Ryder, S.J. 

<* November 7, 1859." 

Some time before, the same gentleman who gave 
me the preceding letter had sent a bottle of rare 
wine to Dr. Ryder during the latter's sickness. 
The graceful note of acknowledgment from the 
priest was also presented to me, and from my 
scrap-book I here subjoin it. I was not the James 
mentioned in the note. 

** Alexandria, Va., March 15, 1858. 
" My dear Friend, — Your cordial present, with your still 
more cordial note of congratulation on my recovery, I have 
received through the kindness of James, and sincerely thank ■ 

you for both. The liquid I have tasted, and despite all the 
defects of a vitiated palate, drugged of late with pills, &c., I 
consider it the true, genuine article, worthy of the gracious J 
Operto, and improved by the gravity of age, truly Lusitanian. ^ 
In this kind of wine I have some experience, for while in 
Philadelphia we imported the pure Port from a conventual 
vineyard in Operto. It is so pure that I should think even 
Father Mathew might not object to it. I hope I shall be able 

112 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

to drink your health and that of your amiable family in a glass 
of it on St. Patrick's day. I am still far from well, but if this 
lovely weather continues I hope ere long to be myself again. 
"James has been my constant companion of late, though I 
heartily wished him better employment. The vista that you 
pen is cheering. May it not be a cul-de-sac. It is, however, 
in good hands. Mr. Kelly is a real Irish advocate, fearless, 
cordial, and persevering. I long to make his acquaintance. 
With best wishes for your health and happiness, and those of 
your family, I am, 

** With great sincerity, 

" Gratefully yours, 

"James Ryder, S.J." 

The Mr. Kelly here referred to was Mr. John 
Kelly, of New York, at that time an influential 
member of Congress. Father Ryder was trans- 
ferred from Alexandria, where he had been modest 
assistant to the quaint Father Peter Kroes, S.J., to 
St. Joseph's Church at Philadelphia. During the 
last year or two of his life he was in failing health, 
and died in the latter city January 12, i860, almost 
about the same time that the saintly Bishop Neu- 
mann, the glory of the Church of Philadelphia, 
suddenly passed away. The life of such a Jesuit 
as Dr. Ryder presents a sharp contrast to that of a 
great worldly man. The powerful Provincial of 
yesterday guiding his Order, is the humble subor- 
dinate in a small parish to-day. Ryder at Alexan- 
dria, Brady at Bohemia Manor, and Fulton in New 
York, went about obedient to others, faithful in 

8 113 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

small things as they had been in great, shining 
examples of a true humility which teaches the 
world an object lesson much needed as a corrective 
of that sin by which the angels fell, — ambition. 
Heroes, indeed, were those Jesuits in the right 
sense of the word. 

The Philodemic Society, founded by Dr. Ryder 
at Georgetown in 1830, held commemorative ex- 
ercises on the day of his funeral, when I made 
some memorial remarks on account of my inti- 
mate relations with the deceased, at the request of 
my fellow-members of the Society. The Philo- 
demic printed my youthful tribute. A gentleman 
who remembered the former friendship between 
Dr. Ryder and Mr. Buchanan advised me to send 
a copy of the speechlet to the President. I did 
so, and received the following reply : 

"Washington, 31st March, i860. 
** My dear Sir, — I have received your favor of the 23d 
instant, with the accompanying copy of your eulogy on the 
late Rev. Dr. Ryder. I shall take great pleasure in reading 
your remarks when I can find leisure to do so. 

"The pressure of important public duties must be my ex- 
cuse for not acknowledging your favor at an earlier day. 

** Yours respectfully, 

** James Buchanan. 
* Mr. James Fairfax McLaughlin, 
*' Georgetown College." 

I had not expected a letter from the President 

of the United States in response to a school-boy's 

114 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

effusion, but older heads than mine understood its 
meaning better. When Mr. Buchanan was Sena- 
tor and Secretary of State, and Dr. Ryder President 
of Georgetown College, the statesman's carriage 
was often at the College to take the Jesuit to din- 
ner at the hospitable table of the distinguished 
Pennsylvanian. For years they were intimate 
friends, though latterly estranged ; and those who 
knew of these things construed the courtesy to me 
as a bow of the President of the United States to 
the ghost of an old and tender friendship. 



115 



CHAPTER V 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CLASS-ROOM THE TWO 

MULLEDYS 

IT was my lot to plod steadily, a year in each 
class, from First Rudiments to Philosophy. I 
made Third Humanities under Mr. Tehan ; 
Second Humanities under Mr. Prendergast ; First 
Humanities under Mr. Jameson ; Poetry under 
Father Barber for a part of the year, who fell sick 
about the period of middle examinations, and 
under Father Brady for the rest of that year ; 
Rhetoric under Father Fulton ; and Philosophy 
under Father Nota. 

Mr. Prendergast and Father Barber were the 
best teachers I ever had. They possessed the 
teaching faculty in a marked degree, and I learned 
more under them than under anybody else. Mr. 
Prendergast was a large, raw-boned man, of strong 
Celtic characteristics and thorough-going methods. 
By the bye, he was the best weight-thrower or shot- 
putter in the house. His way of getting down to 
business was novel. When the lesson, for exam- 
ple, in Lucian's Dialogues or Xenophon's Ana- 
basis, was in order, he would turn to Charley 

ii6 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Dimitry, who sat at the upper end of the right- 
hand bench, and exclaim, in a loud tone, " Deme- 
thry, xai and." This meant, Hke Father Nota's 
" incipiamus nos^'' that we were now to proceed with 
the lesson. Mr. Prendergast believed in short tasks, 
but absolute thoroughness. Five or six lines of 
Greek were all he required. This we thought a 
trifling, easy task, as we could translate that little 
bit in a few minutes. But when " Old Prendy" ut- 
tered the inevitable " jcat and," and we began and 
rattled off the translation, then the real trouble 
began. You had not only to parse, but pick to 
pieces every word, give the parts of speech and their 
derivations, conjugate the verbs usque ad finem^ de- 
cline the nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, tell the 
declensions, explain the diaeresis, government, ellip- 
sis, construction, why this tense and that mood were 
used and not others, descant upon the functions of 
the middle aorist and optative dative, etc., until 
your head fairly reeled with Greek roots. If you 
slipped up, " Old Prendy" was at you instanter. 
"Hot, sir'?" (^/^^//V<?/," What, sir*?") "Next one." 
This meant every boy in the class, one after an- 
other, hit or miss, and not one of us was sure 
whether he had answered rightly or wrongly till 
the whole class had been polled. By that time 
curiosity, competition, rivalry, eager desire to solve 
the question and come out ahead, seized upon each 

boy, and when at length the wide-awake teacher 

117 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

gave his own clear version, full and masterly, we 
all had learned something new, something that we 
remembered, from the way it was hammered into 
us and driven home. We soon found out that 
those five or six little lines of Xenophon or Lucian 
had many knotty intricacies in them that we hadn't 
dreamed of when we began to translate them so 
glibly at the start. Greek was Mr. Prendergast's 
strong point. 

Father Barber followed a similar plan on a more 
extended scale. Each student in the class of 
Poetry was called upon to point out the niceties 
of every word or passage, both in recitations and 
compositions, weigh the meaning and give his 
opinion, before the professor in clear, polished, 
philosophical style told us where we had tripped, 
what this master or that had to say on the point, 
and the exact prosody, inflection, definition, and 
shading of the word and thought of Cicero or 
Horace, Homer or Virgil, or whoever the author 
might be. Father Barber was a polished, classical 
scholar, and a man of exquisite taste in English 
literature. Boyd Faulkner, of Martinsburg, Vir- 
ginia, was my classmate in Poetry, and enjoyed 
with me the masterly instructions of Father Barber. 
Boyd's father, Charles James Faulkner, was a dis- 
tinguished graduate of Georgetown, and as mem- 
ber of Congress and United States Minister to 
France took high rank among American states- 

ii8 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

men. Boyd himself 's now an able judge on the 
bench in West Virginia. - 

Fathers Nota and Curley did not have the 
teaching faculty in a high degree, a proof that the 
possession of deep learning, with which all of their 
acquaintances competent to judge could not fail to 
credit them, is not always accompanied with the 
art of imparting it. Father Fulton in many re- 
spects was an admirable teacher, in others not so 
happy. His taste in some directions was the finest 
of all the professors of my day ; but he was prone 
to be nervous, and apt to disconcert you by an 
eruptive groan when you stumbled, or by witti- 
cisms which perennially bubbled from his lips, 
to the keen enjoyment of everybody else except 
the unfortunate wight who provoked the sally. 
But I learned under him many useful things that 
I never quite forgot, though I did not think the 
management of bumptious young men was his 
forte. What a depth of observation he had, 
though, of style and comparative philology ! 
Father Fulton was a born critic ; the tone of his 
mind, like John Randolph's or Edgar A. Foe's, 
was acutely perceptive, and at times drastic. But 
his sense of humor was large, and he often toyed 
with words and thoughts with inimitable effective- 
ness. In short, he was a man of genius. No 
student who had him for teacher could fail to 

learn much that was of the greatest utility. 

119 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

One of the most interesting men I ever knew at 
Georgetown was Father Joseph O'Callaghan, S.J., 
who was prefect when I went back in September, 
1855, after two years' absence on account of sick- 
ness. His extraordinary, scimitar-shaped nose in 
ninety-nine like cases out of the hundred would 
have provoked the gravest beholder to laughter ; 
but his was the exception, the one hundredth 
anomaly of a nose that was not funny or absurd. 
He told me he was walking one day along the 
street in Baltimore with Father Robert Brady, — 
they were inseparable companions, the one, Brady, 
about six feet four or five inches high, the other, 
O'Callaghan, nearly a foot shorter, — when he heard 
a boy near by exclaim to another boy around the 
corner, " Oh, Charley, Charley, look what a d — 1 
of a snout that small man's got !" The incident 
seemed to amuse Father O'Callaghan not a little. 
But the face and beaming eye redeemed the ancil- 
lary nose absolutely. He was the most universally 
beloved man in the College. A deep scholar, with 
exhaustless wells of information on almost every 
subject, he was always surrounded with a bevy of 
boys, charmed no less by the fascination of his 
manners than his conversation. Capping Latin 
verses was one of his accomplishments, at which 
few in the house could compete with him. One 
holiday afternoon I entered into a contest with 

him, having crammed myself full of the mythology 

120 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

names ending in X Y and Z in Ovid, thinking 
thereby to overcome him. In half an hour my 
store was exhausted, and he put me to rout with — 

** Ix atque-yx produc. Histrix cum fornice, varix ;" 

or, 

**Contrahe; mastichis his et Eryx, calycisque, et Japyx ;** 

or some such jawbreaker, numbers of which he 
had at the end of his tongue. 

His briUiant pubHc defence in the Latin lan- 
guage of a circle of philosophical and theological 
theses before a large and learned company at the 
College, with Monsignor Bedini, the Papal Nuncio, 
principal objector, was as remarkable as that de- 
scribed by Bishop England when young Martin 
John Spalding, afterwards Archbishop of Balti- 
more, made a like defence before the Propaganda 
at Rome, with Cardinal Angelo Mai presiding, and 
such giants as Mezzofanti, Wiseman, and Perrone 
for chief adversaries. How we applauded and were 
carried away with enthusiasm when our masterful 
little man parried every thrust, and traversed with 
firm step the circle of logic, ontology, cosmology, 
psychology, ethics, and moral and dogmatic the- 
ology, while the learned Nuncio was trying to im- 
pede his progress at every step, but who at last 
joined with the whole audience in the hand-clap- 



121 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

ping in genuine admiration for the young victor 
of a hundred obstinate digladiations. 

I saw Messrs. O'Callaghan, Fulton, Brady, 
Young, and McAtee ordained in the College 
chapel by Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick, 
of Baltimore, July 25, 1857. ^^^ three first rose 
to be Provincials of their Order. The death of 
Father O'Callaghan in 1869 was very sad, and 
evoked wide-spread grief. He was returning from 
Europe on the steamer Pereire, having just been 
appointed Provincial, when a huge wave struck 
the ship, crushing in the side where the pious 
Jesuit was devoutly reading his office, and killing 
him almost instantly. Truly was it said, " A great 
man has fallen this day in Israel." 

The two Virginia brothers. Fathers Thomas F. 
and Samuel A. Mulledy, belong to a preceding 
chapter rather than to this, but their names occur 
to me as I write. Father Tom was much more 
prominently connected with College life than 
Father Sam, but I knew the latter better. He 
was a man of the first endowments, a " strong- 
minded" man, as Father Kohlmann once said of 
him in a letter from Rome, whither Samuel Bar- 
ber and Samuel Mulledy had been sent to make 
their noviceship and studies at San Andrea. He 
was for a short time President of Georgetown Col- 
lege, and afterwards came to New York, having 

had his " ups and downs," and was engaged in pa- 

122 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

rochial duties at St. Lawrence's Church in that 
city, a house of the Jesuits. He spent there the 
remainder of his days, greatly beloved by the 
congregation. He died an edifying death in 1866, 
in the fifty-fifth year of his age. Not long ago I 
visited St. John's College at Fordham, where my 
sons are students, and while walking through the 
College cemetery I passed a grave, the modest 
headstone of which, " In memory of Samuel Mul- 
ledy, S.J.," startled me as though the familiar 
voice of an old friend had unexpectedly accosted 
me. I threw a simple flower on the " turf that 
wraps his clay," and recalled traditions of his 
brilliant intellect at Georgetown, where he was 
long remembered as a bright, particular star. Al- 
though associations of his early life are wanting at 
Fordham to keep his memory green, yet kindred 
dust mingles with his own. He sleeps his last 
sleep among holy, departed Jesuits, ma.^y of them 
like himself famous for the lustre of their talents 
and attainments. The spires and towers of his 
beloved Georgetown cast not their shadows where 
Father Mulledy lies, but the noble Jesuit College 
of St. John's, one of the most justly celebrated 
Catholic seats of learning in America, keeps sen- 
tinel over his dust. The very suddenness with 
which I came upon the spot where Father Mulledy 
is buried revived old memories and emotions un- 
bidden, and I was happy to relate some reminis- 

123 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

cences of this famous classical scholar of George- 
town to the President of St. John's, Father Thomas 
J. Campbell, S.J., himself a scholar and orator of 
high rank, whose recent address on Christian Mar- 
riage at Colgate University, a Protestant College, 
has won a wide celebrity. The last time I saw 
Father Mulledy he was surrounded by some of the 
dearest friends of my youth, some of the brightest 
wits, most learned scholars, and accomplished gen- 
tlemen of Georgetown, a Brocard, Fenwick, Lynch, 
Ryder, Blox, Paresce, Stonestreet, Hoban, De 
Necker, Duddy, John McGuigan, Ward, Clarke, 
and other kindred spirits. Profitable and delight- 
ful were those days, memorable and instructive 
those Attic nights, spent not in idleness, frivolities, 
nor gilded halls of pleasure, 

** But search of deep philosophy. 
Wit, eloquence, and poesy." 

Father Thomas F. Mulledy was one of the 
famous band of six Georgetown scholastics sent 
to Rome in 1820 to study and equip themselves 
under the guidance of Father Aloysius Fortis, 
General of the Society, who was determined to 
revive the old Ratio Studiorum^ which from the 
days of Father Maldonatus to those of the sup- 
pression made the Jesuits the finest scholars in 
Europe. A Society which had won plaudits from 

the three greatest Protestants in the world. Bacon, 

124 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Grotius, and Leibnitz, must recover its former 
pace, — 

" Sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum, 
Collegisse juvat." 

Georgetown contributed those six young men 
who accompanied Father McElroy to the State 
Department to get their passports for the outward 
voyage from that old HeHodorus of a scholar him- 
self, John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State. 
Having completed a thorough course in Italy, 
they returned to Georgetown and took charge in 
earnest of the work before them. Father Mulledy 
became President in 1829, Father Ryder Vice- 
President, and Father George Fen wick Prefect of 
Studies. The value to Georgetown of the services 
of this triumvirate it would be difficult to estimate ; 
it was incalculable. Father Tom Mulledy was the 
Ajax Telamon of his day, as he had been before 
when prefect and teacher. The rough, turbulent 
element, of which in old times Georgetown had 
more than its share, found in him its master. That 
gifted collegian, the late Daniel A. Casserly, in an 
exceedingly well-written sketch of the College, 
published in Scribner's Magazine for September, 
1 880, relates the following anecdote : 

"A story is told of President Mulledy while 
still a scholastic — a Jesuit is so known previous 

to ordination — which marks the temper of the 

125 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

man and the occasional roughness of the material 
he had to mould to ways of peace and gentleness. 
While teaching class one day, a burly backwoods- 
man, renowned for fistic prowess, defied his author- 
ity, and proposed to throw him out of the window 
if he insisted on it. It was a crisis, as all present 
knew, and unless the teacher could command it, 
his usefulness was gone. Mr. Mulledy, without 
stopping the lesson, quietly sent to his President 
for permission to treat the defiance in his own 
way, and, that obtained, tucked up his soutane and 
gave battle to his refractory pupil, polishing him 
off artistically, to the delight of his class. It is 
even said that he completed the challenger's pre- 
scription by pitching him out ot the window, — 
which, for the story's sake, as the window was a 
low one, one would like to believe. However 
this may be, it is safe to say that that teacher's 
authority was not again questioned, nor was there 
ever a more popular president. Boys do not dis- 
like to see their teacher abdicate his throne on 
occasion, and show himself ot the same fiesh and 
blood as themselves." 

It was during Father Mulledy 's term that the 
famous " Paddy's Complaint" was written by some 
one at the College, and printed and distributed in 
a broadside among the students and community. 
So biting was the satire, so vitriolic its pungency, 

that not a single copy has come down to us ; 

126 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

every one was seized and destroyed, and it would 
have gone hard with the author, damnatus ad 
bestias^ if he had been found out. But he wasn't. 
Several were suspected, yet it would not do to act 
on suspicion, and nothing was known by which 
the author could be unearthed. Some attributed 
it to Father Grace, others to Brother Anthony 
McElroy, still others to Professor Hugh C. 
McLaughlin, a lay teacher. Significantly point- 
ing to the bake-house in the basement of the 
three-story brick building where, in its second and 
third stories, several of the lay teachers and Brother 
McElroy had their rooms. Father Ryder said, " A 
fresh batch or two are now in the oven, and very 
soon will be ready to hand around." This shrewd 
guess was meant for those who dwelt in that 
quarter, but it was mere guesswork, and the re- 
sponsibility for " Paddy's Complaint" was not 
fixed upon any one. The provocation which had 
called forth the satire was not a slight one. There 
were Irish and anti-Irish parties in those days at 
the College as elsewhere, and, as occurred between 
Whigs and Locofocos, Native Americans and 
Democrats, feeling ran high among them. 

On Saint Patrick's day, 1832, the effigy of a 
Paddy with a string of fish and potatoes and a 
bottle of whiskey was hung up at the College 
near Father Grace's door. This excited the ire of 

the sons of Erin, and shortly after " Paddy's Com- 

127 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

plaint" was issued. Echoes of it still lingered at 
the College in my day, a quarter of a century 
afterwards, but not a copy of the pasquinade was 
extant. The elders of the house told us that its 
appearance produced a great sensation in 1832. In 
his " History of the College" (page 102), Dr. Shea 
says: "The spring of 1832 had its College sensa- 
tion, which produced ' Paddy's Complaint,' the 
wittiest Hudibrastic strain ever written in its 
academic halls. It still lives in the traditions of 
the institution as one of the most clever and severe 
retaliations. No copy of it has apparently been 
preserved ; but John T. Doyle, Esq., of San Fran- 
cisco, a graduate of the class of 1838, says, in a 
letter dated November 8, 1888, and published the 
next month in the College Journal, ' I have, some- 
where among my treasures, a copy of the " Paddy's 
Complaint," one of the original printed copies. 
They are more rare than the Mazarin Bible or the 
early quartos of Shakespeare's plays, veritable 
incunabula; if I can find it, I will transmit it to 
you to be deposited in the College Museum or 
Library, and to be reproduced — so far, at least, as 
fit for reproduction — in the columns of the Jour- 
nal. So far, however, my search has not been 
successful.' The historian must add his fear," 
continues Dr. Shea, " that this last known copy 
has perished. There were two parties at the Col- 
lege, Irish and anti-Irish. The latter, on Saint 

128 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Patrick's day, strung up in a conspicuous place an 
effigy of Paddy with a necklace of fish and 
potatoes, and a bottle of whiskey suspended from 
the neck. The Irish party retaliated with ' Paddy's 
Complaint,' and completely turned the laugh on 
their opponents." 

For nearly sixty years the name of the author 
of " Paddy's Complaint" remained a profound 
secret. One day during the summer of 1889 
Father J. Havens Richards, S.J., President of 
Georgetown College, and Fathers William F. 
Clarke, S.J., and Edward H. Welch, S.J., visited 
me at my residence in Fordham. My father. 
Professor Hugh C. McLaughlin, of Rock Hill 
College, Maryland, who had been a teacher at 
Georgetown College in 1831-32, and my brother- 
in-law. Judge Daniel B. Lucas, President of the 
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, were 
also staying with me at the same time. All of 
these gentlemen and myself were conversing over 
College reminiscences, when Father Richards re- 
marked that perhaps my father might have heard 
of " Paddy's Complaint," the authorship of which, 
like that of the Letters of Junius, was wrapped in 
mystery. 

Father Clarke, who had been a student at the 

College in 1832, at this point spoke up, and said 

he perfectly remembered the appearance of the 

broadside at the College, and that being a day 

9 129 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

scholar he put a copy in his pocket and carried it 
home. But as soon as his father saw and read it, 
he threw it in the fire, and told his son he must 
not bring home any more productions of the 
kind. 

"You may remember," added Father Clarke, 
addressing my father, " the excitement it caused at 
the College, and the unsuccessful effort that was 
made to discover the author*?" 

" I remember it all very well," replied my father, 
and then with a smile added these words : " Let 
me see. Father Clarke, nearly sixty years have 
passed since that time, and you and I, with per- 
haps one or two exceptions, are the only survivors 
of the Georgetown of 1832. In reply to Father 
Richards's question, which frequently during those 
long years I have had addressed to me, ' Paddy's 
Complaint' has been a subject which I have 
avoided, and that silence I had determined to ob- 
serve to the end, and to carry the secret with me 
to my grave. But it is all over and gone now, 
and it can do no harm to tell you I wrote ' Paddy's 
Complaint ;' several were suspected, but I was the 
culprit." 

Surprise was depicted on the face of Father 

Richards, but never can I forget Father Clarke's 

look of astonishment. They asked him had he 

preserved the poem, but he had not, and said that 

he hardly thought a copy was in existence. He 

130 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

used to know it all by heart, he said, and still re- 
membered some of the lines. We all urged him 
to repeat them, and after a little reflection he re- 
peated for us forty or fifty lines. I afterwards took 
down seventy-five or eighty of the lines at my 
father's dictation, and transfer a few of the stanzas 
of " Paddy's Complaint" to these pages as a Col- 
lege curiosity. It began thus : 

" I'd rather I had not been born. 
Than thus endure the hate and scorn. 
And scurvy treatment of some fools. 
Who lounge about the College schools. 
But sure as any gun or sword, 
I'll have my vengeance — take my word. 
Last Patrick's Day, I well remember, 
'Twas cold as any in December, 
These graceless rogues of grotesque figures. 
And worse than that, for they were niggers. 
Did try with rags and aid of cocked hat. 
To deck me out just to be mocked at. 
But mark me well, my plan is laid, 
I'll tell their names and next their trade : 
How they began, and how consulted. 
And the consequence that thence resulted. 

There was Nigger who Dutch could speak 

Much more easily than Greek. 
He was plethoric and soft as clout. 
And blessed with longitude of snout. 
And what is strange (this no rule is. 
But truly Pat sometimes no fool is). 
He seemed the Dutch in this to follow. 
His head though large and round was hollow ; 
131 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

And save report has him belied. 
Was thickly tenanted outside. 

Next after him came Brudder 

Nigger-like, buck-toothed, lank, and slim, 

A lion once when near his fate. 
Was treated in most piteous state ; 
The wolves and bears in packs rushed on. 
Some to have vengeance, others fun. 
Their taunts and sneers he all let pass. 
But when he saw the cowardly ass 
Uplift his foot and strike amain. 
He owned he felt a double pain. 
Just so I felt when on me rushed 

Nigger with grog and venom flushed. 

Methought just then of olden time. 
When I had strength and manhood's prime, 
I'd mash his head with one good sound kick. 
Though it were hard as oaken pound-cake."* 

This sufficiently gives the flavor of " Paddy's 
Complaint." The retort personal becomes sharper 
as the poem proceeds, but I must observe respect 
for my father's wishes, as expressed to me, that the 
parts containing the more savage onslaught on the 
deriders of poor Paddy should not be divulged; 
as he said to the Jesuit Fathers to whom he con- 
fessed the secret of its authorship, that they should 
be buried in the grave with him. 

* Some persons a short time before had sent to the indi- 
vidual for whom these lines were intended a small block of 
oak-wood done up like a pound-cake. 

132 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Strangely enough, a letter was published in the 
College Journal for April, 1894, nearly five years 
subsequently to my father's revelation of the secret 
to Father Richards and the other Fathers, which, 
for the first time it was ever done, at least in the 
present generation, ascribed the authorship of the 
satire to my father. The letter came all the way 
from Kansas City, Missouri, and was written by 
the venerable Mr. Michael Delany to communi- 
cate a student's reminiscences of " Georgetown in 
1832." With the quotation of a few words from 
Mr. DeLny's letter, I will dismiss the episode of 
" Paddy's Complaint." 

" Next came the class of Poetry, presided over 
by Father William Grace, acknowledged by all as 
a most dignified, scholarly gentleman. He was an 
Irishman of the old school. He despised ' shams,' 
and could read them through without an effort. 
It was to his door that a stuffed ' Paddy' was fas- 
tened on the 1 7th of March, wearing a string of 
potatoes and a bottle around his neck. It cut the 
old gentlemen to the soul. An Irishman named 
Hugh McLaughlin, a lay teacher, was very indig- 
nant, and it was generally believed that he was the 
author of ' Paddy's Complaint,' a doggerel rhyme 
in answer to the insult. Father Grace was reputed 
to be the most eminent linguist and mathematician 
of his time." 



133 



CHAPTER VI 

FATHER WILLIAM F. CLARKE HIS GRAPHIC LETTERS 

IN RELATION TO THE COLLEGE 

THE eighth annual reunion of the Society 
of Alumni took place on the 26th of June, 
1888. Quite a large number of the mem- 
bers broke bread together on that evening at the 
Arlington Hotel in Washington. I sat between 
Judge William Matthews Merrick, whose death a 
few months later deprived the College of his match- 
less services as centennial orator elect, and Father 
William Francis Clarke, S.J. They talked of their 
College days of fifty-eight or sixty years before, 
and told anecdotes of the olden time. Father 
Clarke said he entered in March, 1829, and al- 
though Judge Merrick was the younger, he re- 
marked that he entered a year or two earlier. 

Father Clarke's life in the ministry, after his 
graduation in 1833, covered a period of fifty-seven 
years. Sanctity was his distinguishing quality. 
His reputation was that of a profound theologian. 
None of his many converts lost the faith or re- 
lapsed into error. Candidates for the priesthood 
knew when he was objector to their theses, for 
those who withstood that battery unscathed de- 

134 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

served well their laurels in philosophy and the- 
ology. He was a descendant of Robert Clarke, 
Surveyor-General of Maryland in 1649, who, in 
time of persecution, professed himself a Catholic 
in open court, and was stripped of his wealth and 
made a prisoner. The sterling qualities of this 
early confessor of the faith were transmitted to the 
Georgetown Jesuit. He said mass like an angel. 
In the confessional he was all gentleness to the 
sinner ; in the pulpit all sternness to sin. Some 
in consequence deemed him puritanical, but his 
penitents thought otherwise. A rigid moralist, he 
was not more exacting with others than to him- 
self. He was decidedly eloquent in the pulpit. 
Father Fulton in Rhetoric class once extolled a 
sermon of Father Clarke's as containing passages 
of great power, and adverted to a fine description 
in it of the lost soul " anchored in hell." He also 
said that Father Clarke's eloquence was at his 
command equally with pen or tongue, and men- 
tioned as a remarkable illustration of his contro- 
versial power letters published in the Baltimore 
Sun by Dr. William Plummer, a distinguished 
Presbyterian minister of that city, and by Father 
Clarke in reply, which displayed on the latter's part 
vigor and elegance that reminded Father Fulton 
of the style of Junius. Many years before his 
death Father Clarke's lower lip was stricken with 
partial paralysis, which for a short time rendered 

135 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

his utterance nasal and indistinct, but he happily- 
recovered, and wielded great power over congrega- 
tions. When his theme was the beauty of the 
house of the Lord, then, indeed, was he truly elo- 
quent. In response to his fervent appeals, un- 
clasped necklaces of precious stones, or diamonds 
stripped from bejewelled fingers were dropped into 
the collection-box, and in contrast with the Holy 
of Holies donors were taught the nothingness of 
the tenement of clay. The church of Saint Igna- 
tius in Baltimore possesses two of the richest chal- 
ices in the United States, one embossed with eight 
pearls and eighty diamonds, and the other fretted 
with one hundred and twelve diamonds, reminders 
of the eloquence of Father Clarke, and his sway 
over pious and wealthy members of his congrega- 
tion. A striking feature of his sermons was the im- 
agery, which sometimes rose into Miltonic strains. 
Having planted the faith in Baltimore, after the 
Acadians, and having had pastoral charge of the 
pro-cathedral during the days of Archbishops Car- 
roll and Neale, the Jesuits disappeared reluctantly 
from the cradle they had rocked, and for nearly 
thirty years the places that had known them there 
knew them not thereafter in the beloved metropol- 
itan city. At last they came back, with a son of 
the Pilgrims as fitting pioneer, when Father Wil- 
liam F. Clarke was appointed in 1 849 pastor of St. 

Joseph's Church by Archbishop Eccleston. 

136 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

A word about the Acadians, who were the first 
Catholics in Baltimore. They went there in 1756. 
The place in 1752 was a straggling village of 
twenty-five houses and two hundred inhabitants. 
The Abbe Robin, chaplain in the army of our gal- 
lant ally in the Revolution, Count de Rochambeau, 
informs us that the Acadians had their own priest 
in Baltimore, Father Leclerc, supposed by some 
later writers to have been the Father Felician of 
Longfellow's Evangeline. The Abbe Robin when 
in Baltimore in 1781 said mass and preached for 
the exiles, and draws this touching picture of them : 

" They still keep up the French language, and 
remain greatly attached to all that belongs to the 
nation of their ancestors, especially to their re- 
ligion, which they follow with a strictness worthy 
of the first ages of Christianity. The simplicity 
of their manners is a remnant of what obtained in 
happy Acadia. . . . The sight of a French priest 
seemed to recall to them their former pastors. 
They begged me to officiate in their church. In 
fulfilling this holy function I could not refrain 
from congratulating them on their piety, and from 
depicting to them the virtues of their forefathers. 
I was reviving memories that were too dear ; they 
burst into tears." * 



* Nouveau Voyage dans I'Amerique Septentrionale, p. 99, 
par I'Abbe Robin. Philadelphia, 1782. 

137 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

The historian Edouard Richard informs us that 
the celebrated American General PhiHp Sheridan 
was the grandson of one of these Baltimore Aca- 
dians.* 

Colonel B. U. Campbell does not mention 
Father Leclerc in his " Desultory Sketches of the 
Catholic Church in Maryland," published in the 
"Religious Cabinet" in 1842 ; but De Courcey in 
his History does, and so does the interesting Jesuit 
narrative, entitled " Sketch of the Earliest Minis- 
trations of the Society in Baltimore."! 

In this " Sketch" appears the following remark : 
"If Mr. Leclerc was in Baltimore, he probably did 
not remain long, and after his departure the Catho- 
lics there had to depend on the visits of Our 
Fathers from the residence at Whitemarsh, who 
were therefore the first regularly attending clergy- 
men." 

The foulest crime in the whole history of Chris- 
tendom was the banishment of the Acadians from 
their native country by England and Massachu- 
setts. They were driven outcasts and beggars over 
the face of the earth. Those monsters of cruelty, 
Lawrence and Winslow, took everything from the 
French Neutrals, — houses, lands, cattle, crops. 



* Acadia. Missing Links of a Lost Chapter in American 
History, vol. ii. p. 326. New York, 1895. 
f Woodstock Letters, vol. iii. p. 52 ^/ seq. 

138 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

country, every shred of their earthly possessions, — 
with a devilish barbarity to which I can find no 
parallel in modern history, not even the partition 
of Poland, and have to go back to those pagan 
conquerors of antiquity described by Thucydides, 
in order to match the two horrible miscreants. 
Parkman has blasted his reputation as a historian 
by defending this cold-blooded extirpation of seven 
thousand simple, virtuous, frugal people, the hap- 
less Acadian peasants of Nova Scotia. Every- 
where the exiles were doomed to misery and lin- 
gering death, with the exception of the land of 
Lord Baltimore. There, on the banks of the 
Patapsco, they found an asylum, and rekindled in 
the home of toleration the light of faith, after it 
had been extinguished on the St. Mary's, and 
banished across the Chesapeake with the Jesuits to 
Bohemia Manor. 

In 1768 Father John Ashton, S.J., a Tipperary 
Irishman, who later on built the first house at 
Georgetown College, was appointed by the Su- 
perior, Father John Lewis, S.J., to make regular 
visits once a month from Whitemarsh to Balti- 
more. His congregation consisted principally of 
Acadians, but there were a few Irishmen. Among 
the latter Colonel Campbell mentions Patrick Ben- 
net, Robert Walsh (probably father of the George- 
town alumnus of the same name, clarum et vene^ 
rabile nomen)^ and William Stenson. It is believed 

139 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

that Fotterall's Building, preserved yet in Moale's 
old drawing, on the site of Reverdy Johnson's 
residence at a later day, the northwest corner of 
Calvert and Fayette Streets, was the first house in 
which mass was celebrated in Baltimore. Father 
Leclerc probably was celebrant. In Father Ash- 
ton's day the average congregation numbered about 
twenty, " and seldom," says the Sketch in " Wood- 
stock Letters," " exceeded forty persons." 

One McNabb was the builder of St. Peter's, the 
first Catholic church erected in Baltimore, situated 
on Saratoga Street, where Calvert Hall, the school 
of the popular Christian Brothers, now stands. 
McNabb contracted a debt of two hundred pounds, 
Maryland currency, while building the church, and, 
being pressed by the principal creditor, he failed. 
This Shylock seized the church, locked it up, and 
held the key until 1774 or 1775. In his "Annals 
of Baltimore," Griffith says : " By a ludicrous suit 
against Ganganelli, Pope of Rome, for want of 
other defendant, to recover the advance of M^ 
McNabb, who became bankrupt, the church was 
sometime closed at the commencement of the 
Revolution, and the congregation assembled in a 
private house on South Charles Street until pos- 
session was recovered." It is probable that the 
Fathers at Whitemarsh kept up their monthly 
visitations to Baltimore until 1784, when Father 

Charles Sewall, S.J., of the celebrated Catholic 

140 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

family of Woodyard, brother of Father Nicholas 
Sewall, Jesuit Provincial of England after the 
death of Father Charles Plowden in 1821, became 
the first resident pastor of St. Peter's Church. 
Father Carroll, Vicar Apostolic, joined Father 
Sewall at St. Peter's in Baltimore in 1786. After 
Father Enoch Fenwick — a future President of 
Georgetown College — was ordained in 1808, 
Archbishop Carroll (for he was raised to the dig- 
nity of an Archbishop on the 8th of April in the 
same year) applied to the Jesuits, and, receiving 
their consent, appointed Father Fenwick pastor of 
St. Peter's Church. Father Enoch must have had 
a great deal of that quality in him for which his 
youngest brother. Father George Fenwick, was so 
beloved. All accounts that I have seen represent 
him as a splendid specimen of the Maryland cava- 
lier. I used to hear Archbishop Martin John 
Spalding, of Baltimore, whose intimate acquaint- 
ance and warm friendship I had the honor to 
enjoy, speak with kindling voice and eye of his 
near kinsmen the Fenwick brothers, Enoch, Bene- 
dict J., and George, and a fourth brother, the only 
one who did not become a priest. For the next 
ten or twelve years the energetic Father Enoch 
Fenwick was in Baltimore, pastor of the pro- 
cathedral, and with all classes of the people he 
was extremely popular. The grand object was to 

build a Cathedral, and in raising funds for the 

141 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

purpose Father Fen wick was of invaluable assist- 
ance to Archbishops Carroll, Neale, and Marechal, 
with the last of whom he remained in pastoral 
charge of St. Peter's but for a short time. When 
at length the noble pile was reared, and Father 
Baxter, S.J., Professor of Philosophy at George- 
town, went over to preach the dedication sermon 
at the Cathedral, May 31, 1821, he made nameless 
reference to Father Enoch (the most a Jesuit is in 
the habit of making to another Jesuit) when he 
said : 

" Nor would the walls of this Cathedral be 
silent if they had an understanding to discover, 
and a tongue to tell you by whose exertions they 
are what they are." Father Enoch Fenwick was 
President of Georgetown College when this ser- 
mon was delivered. In 1849 ^^^ ^^^g vacant 
chair, or, if I may use a poetical expression of the 
late brilliant John Boyle O'Reilly, "the empty 
niche," was once more filled when Father William 
F. Clarke, S.J., went to Baltimore as pastor of St. 
Joseph's Church. For the greater part of his long 
and useful career in the priesthood, as President 
of Loyola College, pastor of the Church of St. 
Ignatius, and in other positions, he labored in Bal- 
timore faithfully, and endeared himself to the 
people by his learning, piety, and eloquence. He 
died in Washington in the odor of sanctity Octo- 
ber 17, 1890, and is buried at Georgetown College. 

142 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

For over a quarter of a century I corresponded 
with Father Clarke, for whom I felt a very sincere 
affection. I subjoin one or two of his letters, 
which will no doubt prove interesting reading to 
Georgetown alumni. 

" Loyola College, 
*<Balt., March 26*^, 1888. 

*' Dear Mr. McLaughlin, — I fear I can give you little or 
no information which would be worth embodying in your 
discourse. I judge from your letter that you propose to make 
that discourse an abridged history of G. T. College. Can 
that have been the intention of F' Doonan when he requested 
you to 'awaken interest in the approaching Centennial of the 
College ?' What ground will the orator on that occasion have 
to stand on if you preoccupy it all ? However, that is his 
business, not mine. 

** All that our Fathers have been able to discover about the 
College has been published from time to time in the * Wood- 
stock Letters,' a copy of which F'' Doonan could lend you : 
or, if you prefer, you might consult it at St. Francis Xavier*s 
College, where I suppose they have all the Numbers of this 
Periodical. It might be well to apply there before writing 
to F' Doonan ; because by examining the Xavier copy you 
could judge whether it would be worth your while to send to 
Georgetown for it. At St. Xavier's, too, I think you will 
find some copies of articles written by F"" Stonestreet about 
G. T. College. Among those articles is a funeral discourse 
in honor of Bishop Fenwick, in which reference is made to 
G. T. C. 

" F'' Curley, of course, you have not forgotten. He entered 
the Society a year and a half before I went to the College as 
a student ; and he knew something of the College before his 
entrance, as he was a postulant for a considerable time before 
his admission. 

143 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

" It would be well to inquire what became of the writings 
of Rev. W"* Matthews, who was a Professor and Pres* of the 
College, and knew it probably from its foundation. He must 
have had some notes, and probably a diary of his College life. 
Perhaps his successor at St. Patrick's, F' Walter, knows some- 
thing about his papers. Perhaps they were brought to Balti- 
more, and are in the archives of the Archbishopric. These 
archives have lately been put in order. It would most prob- 
ably be worth your while to come some Saturday evening to 
Bait., and, after an early mass, spend the Sunday in examining 
these archives, which I feel certain the Cardinal would with 
pleasure allow. Among the facts made known by arranging 
them is one of which I had never heard, — that the names of 
F*"^ Dubuisson & McSherry were sent to Rome as nominees 
for a Bishopric. 

** I am almost certain that F"" Blenkinsop, who entered the 
Society in 1834, kept a diary. The Italians came to G. T. 
C. after I left it. F"" Ciampi, now at Frederick, or F^ McAtee, 
of Jersey City, could give you information regarding them. 
When I went to G. T. C, in March, 1829, I made the 29th 
boarder. F'' Feiner, who died soon afterwards, I was told 
was Pres*. But he was ill in the Infirmary. F"" Beschter was 
acting Pres*. The following Sep. schools opened with 60 
scholars, F"" Tom Mulledy having been made Pres* and 
drummed up scholars during vacations. He was i^* Pref. 
when I entered, and was Pres* till he was made Prov. in" 
(1837?). "Under him the College flourished and became 
known throughout the country. F*" Dzierozinski was Superior 
of the Missio-n. It was not a Province till F' McSherry was 
made Provincial in'* (1833?). "He succeeded F" Tom M. 
in the i** Prefectship. Just before F" McSherry became Prov. 
F' Kenny, from Ireland, was Visitor, an office higher than 
that of Provincial. F' Dzierozinski was Vice- Provincial after 
the death of F" McSherry. F""^ Kohlmann and Gabaria were 
Professors of Theology. Vandevelde, afterwards Bishop, was 

144 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Prefect and Prof, of French when I was a boy there. F"^ 
Dubuisson taught me French. He had been private secretary 
either to Napoleon or the Empress : I think the latter. 
Thrice miracles were wrought when he gave Communion. 
He was Prefect long before my time. F'' Grivel was a 
French count, was sent to this country to be Master of 
Novices, was afterwards Spiritual Father in Georgetown. 
He had been Visitor to England, and was in the General 
Congregation which elected F"* Fortis General. Father Ben 
Young was my Professor of Rhetoric. He was the only one 
of those who went to Italy who preached there in Italian. 
In Italy F'' Mulledy was Prefect. F' Fenwick taught Algebra. 
F"" Tom Lilly was Prefect in Georgetown for many years. 
The Professors of Philosophy in my time were Ryder, 
Gabaria, Blox, McGuigan (Jno.), myself, & Early. F' 
Ward was Professor of Poetry & Math, many years. 

** During my time the Infirmary and the houses west and 
east* of the original building were erected, the Infirmary 
and building west of original by F*" Tom Mulledy. 

" But why write more ? You will find all this and more, 
if I mistake not, in the * Woodstock Letters.' 

" I wrote to your wife offering a pair of Crozier beads. 
Did she get my letter ? Paternal love and blessings to her. 
" Yrs. devotedly in Christ, 

" W. F. Clarke, S.J." 

When I sent him the address he refers to, after 
its publication by the Society of Alumni, Father 
Clarke's fears that I meant to inflict " an abridged 
history" of the College upon the public were dis- 

* This is an error of the pen. The building on the east 
side of the Old Building was erected by Father Maguire, in 
1854. 

10 145 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

pelled. But I am persuaded every alumnus will 
enjoy the delightful glimpses of old times furnished 
in the preceding letter. Two foot-notes in the ad- 
dress — one containing an extract from Dr. Levins's 
diary relative to the " squabble over banners" be- 
tween Columbia and Georgetown boys, and the 
other an extract from a letter of Father Carroll re- 
specting the purchase of the land upon which the 
College is situated from Mr. Threlkeld and Colonel 
Deakins — elicited another particularly interesting 
letter from Father Clarke, replete with pleasant 
reminiscences. 

** GoNzAGA College, 
"Washington, D.C, Dec. 20, 1888. 

** My DEAR Friend, — My warm congratulations to your- 
self and your excellent wife, my very dear child," [Mrs. 
McLaughlin is one of the saintly Father's many converts to 
Holy Mother Church], "on your lately celebrated 21st an- 
niversary of your marriage. . . . 

** I had already read carefully the two notes to which you 
direct my attention. When I was a boy at G. T. C. M' 
Threlkeld, then a white-haired, hale, fine-looking old gentle- 
man, would come occasionally to the College, stop at the 
open doors of our class-rooms, salute professor and scholars, 
and make a few kind, pleasant remarks. On one occasion, I 
and the great majority of the students, accompanied the old 
gentleman, at his invitation, to the hill back of the oldest 
building ; (then the old building, for there were but two, the 
original two story and the tower building,) from the brow of 
which he showed us he had a pair of pistols which could send 
a ball across the Potomac. 

** I was present, Oct. 12th, 1824, when at the arrival of 

146 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Lafayette at the east gate of the Capitol, there was what your 
note from Rev. M"^ Levins calls a * squabble for banners,' but 
what was a regular battle between the College boys and the 
Washington Seminary boys (now Gonzaga Coll.) on one 
side, and the Columbia College boys on the other. Just in- 
side that gate, nearest to the triumphal arch that spanned it, 
in two lines, the College and Seminary boys were drawn up ; 
and as soon as Lafayette and suite entered, they attempted to 
form in behind them, according to programme. But the Co- 
lumbia Coll. boys, all grown young men, who had claimed, 
but were refused the first place — we having arrived on the 
ground before them — and had stood just outside the gate, 
rushed in and endeavored to take our place. A tremendous 
battle ensued, during which the populace and the other schools 
took the place for which the College boys were contending. 
One of the prefects of the Seminary, M'' Newton, made his 
way to the Capitol, with some 7 or 8 of us boys, I being of 
the number. The G. T. C. boys lost their flag. On the 
14th Oct. the College and Seminary boys were marching 
from the College to Washington, and while passing down 
Bridge Street, the lost flag was seen waving over a one story 
frame building in that street, and occupied by shoemakers. A 
halt was made, and some of the larger boys went in, demanded 
the flag and got it. This * squabble' or battle-flag used to be 
in the College Museum, when I was a student there. . . . 
** Yours devotedly in Christ, 

«'W. F. Clarke, S.J." 

This letter of an eye-witness of the scene is an 
important contribution to the true history of the 
affair. In his " History of the College," Dr. Shea 
says the Georgetown boys captured the banner of 
the Columbia boys. As Dr. Shea possessed the 
diary of Father Levins, another eye-witness of the 

147 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

battle, he probably compiled his account from it. 
While Father Clarke says the Georgetown boys 
lost their place in the procession, Dr. Shea's ac- 
count says they maintained it. Father Clarke is 
silent about the capture of the flag of the Colum- 
bia boys by the Georgetown boys ; Dr. Shea says 
they captured it. Leaving out details in which 
they agree, I add that portion of Dr. Shea's account 
wherein they differ. 

" In the contest that followed, a star on the top 
of Columbia's flagstaff cut away the banner of 
Georgetown. Then the stoutest of Georgetown's 
students made a rush and wrested from their an- 
tagonists the banner which had recently been pre- 
sented to them by the ladies of Washington, and 
of which they felt extremely proud. Thus each 
side lost its colors, but Georgetown maintained its 
place in the procession, and the students of the 
College and Seminary, led by Rev. Messrs. Levins 
and Matthews, with the other professors, marched 
exulting on. Three days after, as a prefect was 
taking out some of the pupils, they descried their 
banner hanging from a window of a low frame 
building on the south side of Bridge Street. They 
entered the store in the lower part and demanded 
their property so imperatively that it was restored 
to them. Upon this they sent back to Columbia 
College the trophies which they had carried off. 

In commemoration of the affair the Georgetown 

148 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

students had a fine banner painted by an artist 
named Simpson, representing on one side an eagle, 
with the motto ' Nemini Cedimus^' and on the other 
side the arms of the College." * 

* Shea's History of Georgetown College, p. 65. 



149 



CHAPTER VII 

FATHER ROBERT FULTON EXTRACTS FROM HIS LET- 
TERS NEW YORK ALUMNI FATHER m'eLROY 

DURING the latter years of his life Father 
Robert Fulton, S.J., after spending about 
twenty years in Boston, came to New 
York to reside, where I saw much of him, and re- 
newed the intimate relations of early life with my 
old Georgetown professor. He had been a great 
toast among the literary people of Boston, and the 
story runs that Oliver Wendell Holmes once 
quaintly told him that one or the other of them 
must get off the Hub, since his own facetiae were 
at a discount in the meridian of Harvard, while 
Fultonian side-splitters were quoted at a premium. 
Droll and original as possible. Father Fulton's 
witty sayings, if published in a book, would be a 
notable contribution to what Professor Macbeth 
happily styles " the might and mirth of literature." 
When he was about to leave Boston, the people 
manifested unusual feelings of sorrow, and at the 
leave-taking John Boyle O'Reilly read the follow- 
ing poem, which he wrote expressly for the occa- 
sion: 

150 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 



THE EMPTY NICHE 

[Read at the Farenvell Reception gi-ven to Re-v. Robert Fulton, S.y.y 
at Boston College Hall^ February ^^ iSSo.) 

" A King once made a gallery of art. 

With portraits of dead friends and living graced ; 
And at the end, 'neath curtains drawn apart. 
An empty marble pedestal was placed. 

*' Here every day the King would come, and pace 
With eyes well pleased along the statued hall ; 
But, ere he left, he turned with saddened face. 
And mused before the curtained pedestal. 

" And once a courtier asked him why he kept 

The shadowed niche to fill his heart with dole ; 
* For absent friends,' the monarch said, and wept ; 
* There still must be one absent to the soul.' 

** And this is true of all the hearts that beat ; 

Though days be soft and summer pathways fair. 
Be sure, while joyous glances round us meet. 
The curtained crypt and vacant plinth are there. 

" To-day we stand before our draped recess : 
There is none absent — all we love are here ; 
To-morrow's hands the opening curtains press. 
And lo, the pallid pediment is bare ! 

" The cold affection that plain duty breeds 
May see its union severed and approve ; 
But when our bond is touched it throbs and bleeds — 
We pay no meed of duty, but of love. 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

** As creeping tendrils shudder from the stone. 
The vines of love avoid the frigid heart ; 
The work men do is not their test alone. 
The love they win is far the better chart. 

** They say the citron-tree will never thrive 

Transplanted from the soil where it matured ; 
Ah, would 'twere so that men could only live 

Through working on where they had love secured ! 

" *The People of the Book,' men call the Jews — 
Our priests are truly * People of the Word* ; 
And he who serves the Master must not choose — 
He renders feudal service to the Lord. 

** But we who love and lose will, like the King, 
Still keep the alcove empty in the hall. 
And hope, firm-hearted, that some day will bring 
Our absent one to fill his pedestal." 

Father Fulton was appointed pastor of the 
church of St. Lawrence, New York, the former 
pastor, the excellent and beloved Father John 
Treanor, S.J., having lost his life by the overturn- 
ing of a stage-coach in California, while he was on 
a visit in that distant State. It was during his 
pastoral charge of this church that I was again 
constantly thrown into the society of my old 
Georgetown professor. 

The sad death of Father Treanor had caused 

the deepest grief in Yorkville, where his church 

was situated, and where he was greatly beloved by 

152 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

thousands. Father Fulton, who was very sensi- 
tive, was appointed immediately after his prede- 
cessor's death. He was an entire stranger in York- 
ville, with scarcely a single acquaintance beyond 
myself to welcome him on his arrival. He be- 
came the recipient of the lamentations of the dole- 
ful congregation, and said to me in his quaint, 
pungent way that his welcome by the good people 
was possibly put off to a future period, when their 
grief might cease to be chronic. One day he ex- 
claimed with mock gravity to an old lady on her 
introduction to him, when instead of pleasure she 
showed sorrow and shed tears, " Why cry, good 
lady*? I assure you I did not murder Father 
Treanor." Compared with the enthusiasm and 
devotion which he had left behind in Boston, it 
must be confessed that his reception in Yorkville 
was but chilly and enforced. Things began to 
mend after a while, but Father Fulton felt the un- 
congeniality of his surroundings, and once re- 
marked to me, with a comical smile, " I will give 
the good people and myself a month or two more 
to see if we can find each other out. If that test 
fails, I am not the man for Sligo." They found 
him out at last. It began to dawn on them that 
one of the biggest men in the whole American 
Church was their pastor ; but after they waked up 
to a knowledge of the giant and grew proud and 
fond of him, the order came, to my profound re- 

153 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

gret, for his transfer to Washington, and my holy 
old professor bade adieu to St. Lawrence's. 

Father Robert W. Brady, S.J., was at this time 
Provincial, and he it was who transferred Father 
Fulton from Yorkville. We kept up a regular 
correspondence while he was in the national 
capital. 

" The people of Washington," he said in a letter 
to me from that city, dated July 4, 1881, "receive 
me kindly, do not scowl at me, or suspect me of 
murdering Father Jenkins. They even say they 
are glad to have me. Such are the differences of 
taste ! I don't find the children so refreshing. 
House better, church beyond comparison, weather 
of course hotter, debt stupendous. Such is the 
briefest expression of the state of things, but that I 
omitted to include the loveliness of W. 

" This dropping of middle life out of considera- 
tion, and piecing together of extremes, childhood 
and old age, is strange, and affects me with contra- 
dictory emotions. Here's a ' nigger' white-wash- 
ing for us. I find he belonged to the family of 
my grandmother Wise, and can report unknown 
and otherwise unheard history. Such things are 
happening at every step. In a speechkin I made 
at the exhibition, I said, ' You do not know me, 
but I went to school with your grandfathers, and 
educated your fathers.' Nearly a hundred of the 
alumni assembled at the exhibition of G. T. C: 

154 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

a handsome set of fellows as you could see in a 

summer's day. . . . did not manage well. 

He lacks Northern experience in quest of money. 
He uttered not a word on the interesting subject : 
said it was a preparation. I thought of the man 
who prepared to jump the fence by running a mile 

and was then too tired. subscribed $2000, 

a pittance for him, hardly paying for all the toady- 
ing he has received. A scholastic is rumored to 
have given $10,000. . . . Frank Rudd was there, 
Preston Sands, Martin Morris, &c., &c. 

" Went to Alexandria to dine with Father 
O'Kane. 1 am to preach at the re-opening of the 
Church now closed for repairs. ... I must take a 
week in Alexandria to retrace all the steps of child- 
hood ; with what acute pain ! with what delighted 
interest I How thoroughly convinced that, ab- 
stracting from Heaven, Life is not worth living. 

" The only great trouble is the debt. I have 
some hope of successfully grappling with it. If I 
succeed, I shall then be ready to die, and lay my 
bones by the river I have loved so well. Kindest 
remembrance to your family. 

" Yr's devotedly, 

" Robert Fulton." 

He was a native of Alexandria, where he was 
born June 8, 1 826, and hence his interest in the old 
town. In another letter from Gonzaga College* 

155 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

dated November 12, 1881, he wrote on political 
parties and other interesting topics. " My notion 
is," he said, " that parties as they are cannot sur- 
vive, because there is no issue. What principle 
constitutes the Democratic party, and what the 
Republican '? I don't know. I am for the Civil 
Service Reform — the most important measure, — a 
tariff for revenue only, and decentralization. These 
are the real issues, and parties must form on them. 
... I preached last Sunday in Alexandria at the 
opening of the Church which had been closed for 
enlargement and repairs. Do you remember the 
legend that used to be in front of the Church"? 
' How terrible is this place ! This is the House 
of God, the Gate of Heaven.' I took that for my 
text: 1°. how it was the House of God; 2°. in 
what sense the Gate of Heaven ; 3°. the conse- 
quent terribility. Pretty good I think. . . . 

" I was looking over the old records of the famous 
Fairclough-Smith controversy. How entirely were 
we in the right, even according to the showing of 
the trustees, Kerr, Generis, Nevitt, &c. Fairclough 
was educated by the Jesuits, brought over here by 
them, appointed there as their agent, took advan- 
tage of his position to try to wrest from them the 
property. . . . 

" I have a fearful job before me . . . and I have 

met with a terrible disappointment ; though it was 

my own fault : I had no idea how thoroughly I 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

had been forgotten. I find hardly any friends, and 
have once more to begin life, prove myself and 
work upwards. 

" I expect to succeed. By God's blessing I have 
never failed, and failure does not seem to me a 
possibility, having the idea that ever one succeeds 
who is in earnest. 

" Yours Affectionately, 

" Robert Fulton." 

In another letter, dated Gonzaga College, Feb- 
ruary 11,1 882, he speaks of our mutual friend, the 
celebrated Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, and 
of politics again. " I hear," he says, " Mr. Stephens 
is inquiring where I am. I sent him word not to 
come to see me, as he was inclined to do, — that I 
would go to see him. To-day is his birthday. I 
suppose he will be overrun. I shall send him my 
congratulations, and wait for leisure to see him. 
When will the leisure come ? I don't know, for 
this begging, and the general reconstruction of 
things here occupy me exceedingly. 

" I do not see many of our old acquaintances. 
Neither . . . nor . . . has been near me. One's 
vanity is corrected by the experience that he is 
not long remembered. I remember them, if they 
do not recollect me. . . . Will you N. Y. gentle- 
men please keep back panics till I get through 
with my debt*? At present I am a greenbacker. 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

As for politics, parties are disorganized — must re- 
main so till the line of principles is more distinctly 
drawn. I doubt whether the Democratic party can 
survive. Blaine has begun a most important move 
—the imperial policy — the hegemony of America 
for the U. S. . . . But it takes time to construct 
a party, and the originator can hardly reap the 
fruits. . . . 

" I miss you a great deal. I should go back to 
Yorkville willingly. Dear Mrs. McLaughlin I 
am persuaded is the best judge of character and 
oratory — why should I not believe it ? My love 
to all of your family. 

" R. F." 

The reader will observe how very much con- 
vinced Father Fulton was that the two great 
national parties were disorganized. He doubted 
whether the Democratic party as then constituted 
could survive. It has undergone a great change, 
and taken a new departure since that period. His 
prevision respecting the Republican party was also 
deep, and little less than prophetic. How accu- 
rately he foresaw and foretold the momentous and 
revolutionary events of to-day in those pregnant 
words : " Blaine has begun a most important 
move — the imperial policy — the hegemony of 
America for the U. S." Father Fulton had a 

very long head. 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

One evening I heard a sharp ring of my door- 
bell, and on going down whom should I find 
walking about the room but Father Fulton. 
" Here I am again, back with you to stay. I was 
made Provincial to-day, and have paid you my 
first visit. Are you glad to see me *?" I was re- 
joiced, and soon my family surrounded him, offer- 
ing congratulations. He had brought me some 
pretty presents from his dear, saintly old mother, 
Sister Olympia, a venerable nun of the Visitation 
Convent at Georgetown, who was my own mother's 
godmother, and looked upon me, as the dear old 
lady said in a note which accompanied the presents, 
with a sort of grandmotherly affection. She reached 
the Motherhood in her Order, and lived to her nine- 
tieth year. Not only on account of his high eccle- 
siastical position, but quite as much on account of 
his extraordinary ability. Father Fulton became one 
of the leading churchmen in New York. He was 
several times selected to give retreats to the clergy 
of the Archdiocese, and the talents and wit and 
holiness of life which had made him a magnate in 
the literary circles and among the Catholics of 
Boston soon established a similar reputation for 
him in New York. He held the office of Pro- 
vincial during two terms, or for six years. His 
next office in the Jesuit Order was that of Visitor 
to all the Jesuit Houses of England and Ireland, a 
still higher position than that of Provincial. After 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

his return from Ireland he had many interesting 
things to relate about that country. I could wish 
my memory were good enough to repeat the ac- 
count he gave to me of his visit to Aubrey de 
Vere at Curragh Chase. " It is a great pleasure," 
he said to the Irish bard, " to meet a gentleman 
pronounced the first of living poets by so com- 
petent a judge of such matters as my own country- 
man, Richard Henry Dana.'* I hope Father Ful- 
ton made notes of his several visits to Curragh 
Chase. His description of the Irish poet was ex- 
tremely interesting, both from a literary point of 
view, and his delineation and nice shading of per- 
sonal traits and utterances of the author of " Alex- 
ander the Great" and " Thomas a Becket." 

After his return from Ireland the holy old Jesuit 
was a confirmed invalid. He never regained his 
health. As intimate as we were, he did not know 
me when I casually met him one day at Fordham, 
coming down from St. John's College. I men- 
tioned my name to him. " What McLaughlin '?" 
said he. I told him. " Well, well," said he, " I 
did not expect to see you in Fordham, and mis- 
took you for somebody else." Then with a touch 
of his old humor, as he looked at me and became 
satisfied I was not somebody else, he grasped my 
hand warmly, and said, " My dear James, this 
thing of remembering faces is all a matter of jux- 
taposition. 'What makes you at Elsinore*?'" I 

1 60 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

told him I was building a house in Fordham, and 
pointed out to him my new home, which would 
be his, I added, whenever he would come. " Often 
oftefi," he said, with evident pleasure, coming out 
with some little effort into his old form, so delight- 
ful in its quaint originality. But he was scarcely 
ever free from pain at this time or afterwards, until 
his death at Santa Clara College, California, Sep- 
tember J , 1 895. How rejoiced I am to have en- 
joyed s ) much of his society when he was in the 
vigor of health, when he was at his best, deeply 
learned, a critic of almost unrivalled perceptive 
acumen, a wit whose sayings would not have dis- 
credited Sheridan, beyond all question the most 
original man I have ever known. A friend once 
took up a paper I was writing, but didn't like the 
opening sentence, and at my request wrote it over, 
preserving the idea, but expressing it in different lan- 
guage. I was dubious, and sent both sentences to 
Father Fulton to decide which should be used. It 
was at the time he was in Washington. This was 
his answer : 

" GoNZAGA College, Apl. 23, '82. 
** Dear Jas, — Yours is incomparably the better. I need 
not tell you that the more you dilute the whiskey of thought 
with the water of words, the poorer the beverage. 

** There's another and a strong reason. Thoughts are to 
have development according to importance. What you men- 
tion as merely incidental, your friend, with wretched taste, 
enlarges on as if essential. You might as well tell us some- 
II 161 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

thing about Switzerland, capta occasions. I think your friend 
does not understand perspective, — he probably studied art in 
China. 

** Yr's. in haste, 

"R. F." 

In 1888, supposing he was in Washington, I 
wrote to invite him to attend what he would call 
a " speechkin," which I was shortly to make there 
before the Alumni Society. His reply, dated Bos- 
ton, June 9, was quite facetious. 

" Dear James, P. C, — As you see already, I am up here, 
not down there ; and there's small likelihood that I shall hear 
the oration, unless by Mr. Edison's new fangled instrument. 
See to it that you do me credit — see to it that people may say, 
not in the odious sense, — talis discipulus, qualis magister. 

" You see I have no * local habitation.' I am like the bird 
Noah sent forth. I went to Wash, for the University busi- 
ness — the aquatic excursion. The Rector here kindly invited 
me here and has taken me in, and is doing for me, in consid- 
eration of certain * chores' which I undertake for him. I am 
* looking for a situation.' Can you conscientiously recom- 
mend me ? My preference is for a place where there is little 
to do, but a large salary to receive. 

•* Commend me to the favor of those dear ladies, your 
wife, sister and daughter. 

" Yrs. in X. 

" Robert Fulton, S.J. 

" P. S. Did you know Edward White, the nominee in 
Louisiana for the U. S. S. ? He was a special pet of mine in 
those days of blessedness, when I thought I was unhappy, but 
possessed the beatitude of youth. R. F." 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

' But space is wanting. I must cut short these 
extracts from Father Fulton's charming letters. 
He was related by blood to the late Henry A. 
Wise, and to ex-President Benjamin Harrison. 
He was gifted as they with intellectual endow- 
ments, and the refreshing spontaneity of his wit, 
the polished culture and aesthetic tone of his 
mind, ard above all the deep, fruitful spirituality 
which oreathed an essential fragrance over his 
priestly life, all combined to make a character de- 
lightful, elevated, and pure. " May flights of 
angels sing him to his rest." 

In several places throughout these pages I have 
mentioned Father John Ashton, S.J., and Father 
John McElroy, S.J. They were both men of 
large initiative qualities, with minds of the con- 
structive order, doing all things well in relation to 
the temporalities of which they had charge. I do 
not know whether Father Ashton had the gift or 
art of eloquence, the letters and traditions of his 
times which I have read or heard of being silent 
upon that point ; indeed, he was no longer a Jesuit 
during his latter years ; but I do know that Father 
McElroy was a wonderful orator. Without the 
graces of the schools, without deep learning or 
conversancy in books, he yet mastered his theme 
by a strong grasp of his subject, and God had en- 
dowed him with a true simplicity which I never 
observed in perfection in any preacher I have heard 

163 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

except himself. He possessed apostolic sway 
over the laity which was not measured by ordinary 
scholastic or dogmatic rules, but which sprang 
from the soul within, and made his plain discourse 
effective '' as the wand of a powerful enchanter." 
The same person whose words I quote also in- 
forms us that " his great talent for preaching was 
discovered almost by accident." A pastor was 
absent. The Superior in the emergency asked 
him if he thought he could preach the next day, 
and his reply was, " Well, if you tell me, I will try." 
Thus Father McElroy was revealed. " Whether 
he preached or conversed," says a writer in the 
" Woodstock Letters," " there was a kind of simple 
dignity and grave tenderness in his manner which 
spoke the saint, and, like the Spirit of God itself, 
moved the hearts of those who listened to him." 
In his spiritual retreats to secular clergymen, which 
the celebrated Father Drumgoole pronounced the 
most effective ever delivered in the American 
pulpit, Father McElroy urged them to aim at the 
highest perfection. " I always told them," he 
once remarked to a friend, " that Poverty was not 
an ivy which should grow on convent walls 
alone." 

We have a flourishing young Society in New 
York of Georgetown alumni, resident in that city, 
similar to the one in Philadelphia of which Mr. 

W. V. McGrath, Jr„ Mr. A. A. Hirst, and other 

164 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

loyal sons of Georgetown in the City of Brotherly 
Love were the originators. Our first President 
was Mr. Richard H. Clarke, of the Class of '46, 
a prominent New York lawyer, brother of the late 
Father William F. Clarke, and author of the " Lives 
of Deceased Bishops of the American Church" 
and other valuable works. Another member, and 
an araent Georgetown man, is Mr. Charles A. 
Hoyt, of the Class of '57. He is a descendant 
of the old Revolutionary Hoyt family of Ver- 
mont, converts to Catholicity, who, like the Barber 
family, burned their bridges behind them when 
they took up the march for Rome. Mr. Hoyt is 
a retired merchant, in affluent circumstances, and 
an ornament of the Georgetown colony in New 
York. Mr. Frank Rudd, of the Class of '62, is 
also a member of the Alumni Society. He is a 
scholar and wit of my generation at Georgetown, 
and a successful lawyer in active practice in the 
great metropolis. 

Another lawyer at the New York bar of un- 
usual ability, and likewise a student in my day at 
the College, is Mr. William V. Leary, who read 
law in the office of still another Georgetown man, 
the late John E. Develin, of the Class of '40. Mr. 
Develin was a man of eminent ability in his pro- 
fession, distinguished during the latter years of his 
life as a power in the politics of the Empire State. 

Mr. Leary has been a close student for many 

165 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

years, delving down deeply into legal principles 
and procedure. His specialty is testamentary law, 
in which field he is probably one of the soundest 
authorities in the United States. He has long 
filled the responsible position of Chief Clerk in the 
Surrogate's Office of New York. 

Our Society had its inception in the parlors of 
Mr. John Vinton Dahlgren, of the Class of '88, 
an energetic young member of the New York bar, 
where a number of our Georgetown men met one 
evening about three years ago, organized ourselves 
into a Society, and set the ball in motion. Since 
then much interest has been shown at our stated 
meetings and annual dinners, and, as there is a 
large number of the sons of Georgetown in and 
around New York, there is reason to hope that 
our young body may grow into a vigorous off- 
shoot of the parent Society at Georgetown. 

Mrs. Dahlgren is quite as much interested in 
Alma Mater as is her husband. The last time I 
visited the College was to attend the consecration, 
by Cardinal Gibbons, in 1893, of the Dahlgren 
Chapel, a Gothic pile erected there by this lady 
with the bounty of a princess and the piety of a 
lady abbess. This noble gift-offering to the Jesuits 
must have cost Mr. and Mrs. Dahlgren, I con- 
jecture, about fifty thousand dollars. The Chapel 
stands between the old North and South buildings, 

and lately has been ornamented by the same 

166 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

donors with stained-glass windows of rich artistic 
workmanship. The old Chapel for the students on 
the second floor of the MuUedy building, so well 
remembered by alumni of a past generation, has 
been converted to other uses. Holy old shrine ! 
In fancy's glass I again can see Father George 
Fenwick seated at its altar with one of his sermons 
before him, rehearsing his beautiful Addisonian 
sentences. He always was seated when delivering 
a sermon. Once more Mr. Folchi, a scholastic, is 
warbling his delicious notes at High Mass, or 
Father De Wolf, hardly his inferior, pouring forth 
a solo at Vespers. The scene changes, and behold 
Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick robed at its 
altar, raising to the exalted office of the priesthood 
a Fulton, an O'Callaghan, a Brady, a Young, and 
a McAtee. Hereafter those sacred offices and 
pious acts will be performed in the imposing 
Gothic Chapel, and the orisons of the boys will 
ascend to Heaven before the beautiful altar which 
has replaced the modest shrine of old. 

Our New York Society held its first banquet at 
the Hotel Savoy, on the evening of March i, 
1897. My toast was in memory of Fathers Ash- 
ton and McElroy, guardians of its temporalities, 
and the two main pillars in the foundation of 
Georgetown College. To the former, I said, it is 
more indebted, after Archbishop Carroll, for its 

establishment as a Jesuit College ; to the latter for 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

its successful management through the trying years 
of poverty in the early days than to almost any 
two others connected with the institution. 

Father Ashton was an Irish Jesuit who came to 
Maryland in 1767, and labored on the missions 
for many years. A voluntary association of the 
clergy was formed after the Society was dissolved, 
and Father Ashton was appointed procurator of 
the temporalities. His singular talents for ad- 
ministration were so well appreciated that Bishop 
Carroll, then Father Carroll, in one of his letters to 
Father Charles Plowden in England, described him 
as " the most industrious man in Maryland," adding 
that " it is a pity he could not have the manage- 
ment of all the estates belonging to the clergy in 
this country ; they would yield thrice as much as 
they now do." Father Carroll's petition to his 
wealthy Catholic friends in England for aid in 
establishing the College went out freighted with 
his best hopes, as my dear old friend Father John 
S. Sumner once said, but, to our founder's disap- 
pointment, it proved barren of substantial results. 
He appealed to Father Ashton, and the old Mary- 
land Jesuits, who supplied the money to buy the 
land and build the first house which still dots the 
College Heights. It was hardly to be expected 
that the same England which had persecuted the 
Maryland Jesuits for over a century would now 

turn round and help them to build the first Catho- 

168 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lie College in the United States. It was in every 
way more fitting that the Maryland Jesuits should 
build their own College, and pay for it out of 
their own patrimony. Through the energetic pro- 
curator this was done, and the name of Ashton 
should be held in grateful remembrance by the 
alumni of Georgetown College. His latter years 
were not so happy, and he was no longer affiliated 
with the Jesuits after the restoration of the Order. 
But he had an edifying death, in 1815, among his 
former confreres, in Charles County, Maryland. 

The next great procurator was Father McElroy, 
who erected the North, or tower building, in 1808, 
— a splendid structure for that day, — and managed 
the finances so well during the hard times after the 
war of 1812 that he saved enough money to send 
several bright young Jesuits to Rome, where they 
completed a course of thorough study, and then 
returned to infuse new life into every department 
of the College. James Ryder, the pride of the 
Maryland Province, Thomas MuUedy, the indom- 
itable Virginian, and George Fenwick, the anti- 
quarian and sweet singer of Israel, were among 
those young men whom Father McElroy was able 
to send abroad, — a triumvirate of whom George- 
town, or any college in America, might justly be 
proud. They carried forward Alma Mater with a 
bound to a front rank in American education. I 

do not mean that all this was accomplished with 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Father McElroy's own money (a Jesuit has no 
money) ; but it was due to his business abihty 
that the money was supplied to bring about these 
happy results. I have heard old Jesuits say, I 
added, in closing my remarks, that Father McEl- 
roy's services to Georgetown, down to the time 
that he and the lamented Father Anthony Rey 
went to Mexico as chaplains in our army during 
the war with that country, have been among the 
most solid and substantial which any one person 
has had it in his power to render to the College. 
His companion, Father Rey, was murdered by a 
band of roving Mexican outlaws, thus becoming 
a martyr to duty as priest and American patriot. 
The noble Church of St. John's, at Frederick, 
Maryland, the magnificent Church of the Immacu- 
late Conception, at Boston, together with Boston 
College, were all reared to the greater glory of 
God by the same Father McElroy. To Ashton 
and McElroy — natural leaders of men, architects 
of grand institutions — Alma Mater owes much, — 
"the debt immense of endless gratitude." 



170 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE GASTONS FATHER GEORGE FENWICK FATHERS 

MAGUIRE AND EARLY CHARLES B. KENNY's " TAUREA 

FUGA" ROBERT Y. BROWN COLLEGE DAYS BEFORE 

THE WAR 

A MONG my fellow-students at Georgetown in 
/\ the early fifties were William and Hugh 
^ ^ Gaston, only grandsons of the First Stu- 
dent, William Gaston, of North Carolina. They 
were both fine-looking fellows, William particu- 
larly, who was about six feet high, straight as an 
arrow, and quite martial in bearing. He went to 
West Point, and became an officer in the United 
States army. He was killed in one of the Indian 
wars several years before the beginning of the war 
between the States. Hugh, the younger brother, 
was also rather tall, but not so robust. Both 
brothers were distinguished for high-bred manners, 
both genial and most estimable young men. 
Although Hugh was older than I, we came to 
know each other very well, and afterwards, in 
1895, in a monograph on his distinguished grand- 
father which I wrote for the " Records of the 
American Catholic Historical Society" of Phila- 
delphia, I gave some details of Hugh's death, who, 

171 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

like William, fell in battle. My authority for the 
facts was an intimate friend of the Gaston family, 
the accomplished Mrs. Mary D. Gouverneur, of 
Knoxville, Maryland. As the Gastons are so 
honorably connected with Georgetown College, 
the following interesting letter which Mrs. Gou- 
verneur wrote to me some years before when I 
was compiling materials for the Gaston article 
must find a place in these pages : 



** * Nkedwood,' Knoxville, Maryland, 

"Nov. 26, 1889. 

" My dear Sir, — Your letter, which I received in due 
time, would have had an immediate reply, but that I waited 
to examine the old letters of my cousin, Mr. Outerbridge 
Horsey, whose father and mother were both extremely inti- 
mate with Judge Gaston and his third wife. I am sorry to 
say that I could find nothing that would be of the least value 
to you. On my own part, I know that the Judge had but 
one son, whose name was Alexander, and he was the father 
of William and Hugh. The Judge had no children with his 
first wife. Alexander, Susan (Mrs. Robert Donaldson, of 
New York), and Hannah (Mrs. Governor Manly, of N. 
C), were the children of the second wife, — Miss McClure. 
Of the third wife, Mrs. George Graham (Eliza), and Cath- 
erine, who never married. Mr. Hawks, son of the celebrated 
preacher, married his granddaughter, Hannah Manly, and I 
think now lives on the estate of Mrs. Graham, which I know 
she inherited. 

" Hugh Gaston died of wounds received at Antietam, and 
when President Lincoln visited the field, after the battle, he 
was very much struck with Hugh ; and when he discovered 
he was Judge Gaston's grandson, he was greatly moved, and 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

wished to do something for him, but he was told he could 
not be moved, and would surely die. 

** Alexander was educated at St. Mary's Seminary, in Balti- 
more, and was graduated with great honor at the age of i6 
years. 

"Judge Gaston graduated at Princeton, and divided the 
first honor with Judge Philip Pendleton, of Martinsburg, Va. 
No doubt you know that Judge Gaston was offered a place in 
Genl. Harrison's Cabinet, I think Attorney-General. In de- 
clining it, he said that his services were due to his native 
State, which had heaped so many honors on him. Such 
things are not refused in these days. 

" I am very sorry to be able to give you so little, or indeed 
no assistance. I should be so very glad to do it. There are 
several Manlys living in Baltimore, — the children of Gov. 
M.'s second wife, — and he himself may be living for aught I 
know. They might give you some information. 

" Hoping you will have great success, I remain, 
" With great respect, 
** Your obt. servt., 

** Mary D. Gouverneur." 

Mrs. Gouverneur alludes to Alexander, the only 
son of Judge Gaston, but perhaps was not aware 
that he was a student at Georgetown College. In 
referring to students there. Father McElroy men- 
tions him in his Diary. " March 19, 1819. Alex- 
ander Gaston, Newbern, N. C, made his first 
Communion." Dr. Shea, in his " Life of Arch- 
bishop Carroll," * states that William Gaston was 
a pupil at St. Mary's College, Baltimore, in 1803. 

* P. 607. 
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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

This is clearly an error, if he means, as doubtless 
he does, the North Carolina Judge. William 
Gaston entered Georgetov/n College November 
lo, 1791, its first student, where he remained until 
the 24th of April, 1793. In the fall of 1794 he 
went to Princeton, where he was graduated in 
1796. He was admitted to the bar in his native 
State in 1798, and by 1803 he was a leading man 
in North Carolina. The first choice, in 1842, of 
the Philodemic Society for orator at the celebra- 
tion of the Landing of the Pilgrims was Judge 
Gaston, and Dr. Ryder, then President, wrote to 
him and urged him to accept the invitation. In 
declining the honor, the Judge said : 

" I feel and acknowledge the claim which the 
College of Georgetown has upon me, its eldest 
pupil, to join in carrying into execution the cele- 
bration which, to the honor of that institution, it 
has been the first to propose. As a Catholic, I 
am proud of the heroism of that noble band, who, 
adhering with inflexible fidelity to the sacred Faith 
once delivered to the Saints, and carefully trans- 
mitted unchanged through ages by the com- 
missioned witnesses of truth, did not hesitate to 
prefer exile, privation, danger, and death to a 
hypocritical profession of conformity to the Church 
by law established ; and as an American citizen I 
can never cease to be grateful for the glorious 
precedent which they were the first to establish, 

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COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

and by which it was shown that an undoubting 
conviction of the truth of one's own Religion is 
perfectly compatible with tenderness for the rights 
of conscience in others. . . . Though my years 
bear but lightly on me in other respects, they have 
evidently not a little impaired that strength and 
distinctness of voice which are so necessary to a 
public speaker. And moreover, as the close of 
life approaches — calmly and gently as, I thank 
God, it does come on — I feel a constantly in- 
creasing desire, and believe there is an increasing 
fitness, that I may be allowed to spend the re- 
mainder of my days in the discharge of accustomed 
duties among accustomed associates, remote from 
public glare, and exempt from the ambition of dis- 
play. Solve senescent em.'" 

How inexpressibly touching the old man elo- 
quent becomes at the close I A world of hu- 
mility glows in those two Latin words. Such 
tenderness it is impossible to convey through the 
ground-glass of a translation. 

What old student that knew him ever hears 
without the liveliest pleasure the name of Father 
George Fenwick repeated, or reads about him 
without similar emotions'? How much I loved 
him, how much everybody loved him ! He suc- 
ceeded that profound scholar Father Daniel Lynch 
as Prefect of Studies and Professor of Rhetoric in 
1855^ ^^d held those positions until his death in 

175 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

November, 1857. "^ ^^^^ ^^ thank you," wrote 
Father Robert W. Brady, former Provincial, and 
my very particular friend and teacher, " for your 
tribute to dear old Father Fen wick." I had writ- 
ten a little memoir of Father George for Dr. 
Shea's Magazine. " How much," added Father 
Brady, " I delight to read every word in his praise ! 
He was to me a second father, for whom I felt 
a real filial affection. But why need I say that *? 
Didn't we all feel towards him in the same way *?" 
Truly, we all did. The list of his ardent admirers 
would comprise about all the College catalogues, 
if any were kept, during his day. Michael De- 
lany, of 1832, John T. Doyle, of 1838, Hugh 
Caperton, of 1841, Father Fulton, of 1842, are 
but a few among the many who have written trib- 
utes of affection and inscribed them to the mem- 
ory of Father Fenwick. " A bevy of fellows," 
said Mr. Doyle, " would hang on his words- fre- 
quently during the whole of a holiday afternoon. 
He would go off with us on long walks over the 
hills towards Tenallytown, the Chain Bridge, or 
the ancient mill on Rock Creek. What a noble 
tenor voice he had ! All the Latin I know, and 
Greek I once knew, he taught me. I hope the old 
College continues to uphold the high standard of 
classical scholarship that distinguished it sixty 
years ago, — Consule Fenwicji." 

When he came back from Rome he was full of 

176 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

zeal over the Maryland Pilgrim Fathers, from one 
of the most distinguished of whom he was de- 
scended. This was Cuthbert Fenwick, of Fen- 
wick Manor on the Patuxent River. Cuthbert's 
progenitors were the stanch Catholic Fenwicks of 
Fenwick Tower, Northumberland County, Eng- 
land. There was contagion in Father George's 
words, and Dr. Ryder and he organized the Philo- 
demic Society, and got up the first celebration, in 
1842, of the Landing of the Pilgrims. It is incom- 
prehensible why Catholics have allowed that pious 
custom, begun over a half-century ago with the 
splendid oration of William George Read, to fall 
into disuse and neglect.* What a discreditable 

* Orations delivered on the Landing of the Maryland Pil- 
grims. Those under the auspices of Georgetown College 
were delivered in St. Mary's County, Maryland. 

1842. William George Read, Georgetown College. 

1843. William George Read, Philadelphia. 
1843. Rev. p. Corry, Mt. St. Mary's College. 
1843. J. C. Legrand, Calvert Society, Baltimore. 

1846. James McSherry, Mt. St. Mary's College. 

1847. George H. Miles, Mt. St. Mary's College. 

1848. Frederick J. Nelson, Mt. St. Mary's College. 

1849. Z. Collins Lee, Georgetown College. 
1852. Henry May, Georgetown College. 

1855. Joseph R. Chandler, Georgetown College. 

1855. Joseph R. Chandler, St. Mary's City. 

There may have been others. I have an impression that 
Rev. Dr. John McCaffrey, the distinguished President of Mt. 
St. Mary's College, delivered one, but it is not in my list. 

177 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

contrast we present to the descendants of the 
Puritans of Plymouth Rock, who have made the 
Mayflower the Argo of American story ! I repeat 
here the words I addressed to my fellow Alumni 
of Georgetown in 1 888 : 

" Catholic Forefathers' Day, next to the Fourth 
of July, should be to us the brightest festival in 
the calendar of freemen. Oh, when will another 
Father George Fenwick sweep the chords of 
melody attuned to the ancestral songs of old St. 
Mary's and St. Inigoes? Ye who have heard 
him until the roof-tree ' dripped with song,' can 
best answer. Tell me, ye sons of the Pilgrims, 
hangs the harp of the Land of the Sanctuary as 
mute as that of Tara, never to be heard again ? 
What Timotheus will arise to sweep the strings 
anew*? What silver-tongued Read will appear 
once more with eloquence like the thunder roll to 
rouse us from our sloth ?" 

Dr. Shea declares that Father Fenwick was 
"the greatest antiquarian of his Order in this cen- 
tury, whose vast knowledge perished with him." * 
Father Edward H. Welch, in a letter to me, re- 
lates the following anecdote : " Father George had 
a most beautiful tenor voice. On his way to Italy 
several vessels were becalmed near Gibraltar. An 
English midshipman sang ' God save the King,' 

■j" Shea's History of Georgetown College, p. 132. 

178 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

and elicited great applause. The Yankees were 
reproached with not being able to do anything of 
the kind, and then Father (then Mr.) Fenwick 
sang the ' Star-Spangled Banner,' leaving the Eng- 
lishman far behind." Another old Jesuit, in speak- 
ing of this incident, once told me that while the 
" Star-Spangled Banner" captivated the Americans, 
it was the " Harp of Tara's Hall" with which 
young Fenwick electrified all of his hearers off 
Gibraltar, especially the Irishmen on board the 
English ships.* 



* To Father George Fenwick was addressed the famous let- 
ter of his brother, the Bishop of Boston, formerly President of 
Georgetown College and founder of Holy Cross College, at 
Worcester, Massachusetts, in which the death-bed of Tom 
Paine was described. Bishop Fenwick, when a young priest 
at New York, on invitation of Paine delivered by his house- 
keeper, went with Father Kohlmann to visit the infidel in his 
last hours. Death-bed repentances are rare, and the devil got 
the victory in the interview which took place between the 
priests and the poor stricken man. The motive which prompted 
the invitation must have been a dying person's caprice, or 
what theologians term velleity. Father Kohlmann opened the 
conversation, but Mr. Paine lost his temper, and blasphemies 
thick and fast fell from his fevered lips. Father Ben Fen- 
wick made better headway, and for a short time the author of 
the patriotic *' Common Sense" tracts which flamed like a 
sword in the Revolution, was gentle and calm, if not tracta- 
ble, with the zealous son of the Pilgrim Fathers of Maryland. 

Presently the Divine name of Christ was uttered by the 
priest, when the fell spirit, till that moment latent, burst forth 

179 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Father Fulton told me many anecdotes and 
facts about Father George. One of them, which 
was news to me, was that he had Indian blood in 
his veins, some Catholic Pocahontas having inter- 
married with one of his ancestors, and Indian stoi- 
cism by inheritance in his character. When he 
was a boy at the College, he put a lighted pipe 
in his pocket one day on the approach of a pre- 
fect. The fire fell through to his shoe and burned 
him, but the prefect did not denote a sign of the 
torture he was enduring from the live coal in 
his stocking, and passed on after mutual saluta- 
tions, before the stoical little fellow made any 
attempt to smother the fire. " He had the finest 
voice I ever heard," exclaimed Father Fulton. "A 
musical enthusiast in Rome, one of the old Roman 
aristocracy, was present there when Father Fen- 
wick sang high mass, and said to him afterwards, 
'You should sing in Opera, Father; there is no 
such voice in Europe as yours.' On another oc- 
casion he was singing the ' Marseillaise' in one of 
our houses in Rome, when a Cardinal was an- 
nounced, and heard the forbidden anthem. France 
was indulging in one of its chronic eruptions 
against the Church at the time. ' What,' said 

again, and the wretched, unbelieving man writhed with rage, 
and poured from his pallid lips another volley of blasphemies. 
In pity and horror the priests departed, and left the author of 
the ** Age of Reason" to his own despairing reflections. 

i8o 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

he, ' the "Marseillaise" in a Jesuit house"?' ' Only 
an American, your Eminence,' replied the rector, 
' blessed with a fine voice.' That rendered it in- 
nocent. The first time," continued Father Ful- 
ton, " I ever saw Father Fenwick was when I was 
a boy just entered at the College. He was seated 
on the porch of the Old Building. One College 
boy had his arm around his neck, another had 
taken his beretta and had it on his own head, and 
a third sat upon his knee." It is a pity that the 
Jesuits cannot recover Father George's papers and 
letters. If he lent them to any of the Maryland 
historians, as I have heard was the fact, it ought to 
be possible to trace them. But enough ; I must 
hurry on. His birthplace and his grave at the 
College are only a few rods apart. Two years 
after his death another grave was dug, and the 
bones of Father Ryder, companion of his youth, 
his prime, and his age, were laid by the side of 
those of Father Fenwick. I have never seen a 
good picture of Father George, hardly one that 
reminded me of him. The one reproduced in the 
College History doesn't look like him at all. 

Father Bernard A. Maguire succeeded Father 
Stonestreet as President when the latter became 
Provincial in 1852. Father Maguire was a grace- 
ful man, clean cut as a greyhound. He added to 
the uses of a pocket-handkerchief the new one 

of making it an effective weapon of oratory. 

181 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Taking it out of his pocket after he had reached 
the pulpit, he would unfold it abstractedly while 
uttering the first words of the sermon. In this 
way his hands would be spread apart to the length 
of the handkerchief. On went the deliberate ex- 
ordium with the white handkerchief playing its 
part like the sail of a ship unfurled to the wel- 
coming breeze. Then, as if a sudden thought 
occurred to him which demanded unusual empha- 
sis, such as " Over eighteen hundred years ago the 
bark of Peter was launched on the sea of Galilee," 
his arms would be spread out, and the handker- 
chief in the right hand would flutter like a flag 
over the sacred bark. The next words perhaps 
would be, " My beloved Christian brethren," ut- 
tered with dramatic, fatherly fervor, when the 
hands would be clasped together over the hand- 
kerchief, which was immediately laid aside as 
though in the way, now that the decks were 
cleared for action and Apollo was about to begin. 
Then the graceful preacher, as if transfixed with 
solemn feeling, would stand motionless for a 
space without a word, in an attitude that Roscius 
or Garrick might have envied. 

When a boy in Frederick, Bernard A. Maguire 
was a special favorite of Father John McElroy, 
who renewed the face of the earth in that inland 
Maryland town. I can understand what must have 

been the bond of sympathy between them. They 

182 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

were both men of action, of marked executive 
force. While Father Maguire did not have the 
power of oratory of Father McEhoy, he had a 
great deal of it, and although not renowned among 
the great scholars of his Order, like Secchi, Ryder, 
Mazella, or Fulton, he was well educated, and 
whatever he said in the pulpit, though it may not 
have been beyond what Burke called " the sub- 
lime of mediocrity," was always effective, be- 
cause, as Father Fulton once said to me when 
speaking of him, " you felt that there was a man 
behind it." He could quell an emeute, subdue a 
rebellion, and bring back boys to loyal obedience 
better than any other man I ever knew at the Col- 
lege. He suppressed the great rebellion of 1850? 
when a large number of the older students went 
off in a body to Washington, and were issuing 
pronunciamentos against good little Father Ward, 
whose enforcement of discipline, in obedience to 
the orders of his superiors, had precipitated the 
trouble. Mr. Maguire's magnetic presence was 
enough. He went out to Washington and talked 
to the insurgents, and the thing was settled. When 
President Ryder got home, the outbreak having 
occurred during his absence, there were clear skies 
at the College, and affairs were moving along in 
their accustomed peaceful channels, as though one 
of the most formidable rebellions in the history of 
the College had not suddenly swept like a cyclone 

183 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

over the house, which was controlled and dissi- 
pated by the tact and natural capacity for leader- 
ship of young Mr. Maguire. This quality of the 
man rendered him so useful in executive positions 
that his opportunities for study were abridged, and 
the busy preoccupation of affairs left him but 
scant time for the pursuits of literature, and the 
usual fulness of Jesuit scholarship. He was gifted 
with the externals of grace of movement, symme- 
try of form, and that indefinable something called 
presence in a very extraordinary degree. These 
captivating attributes served him in great stead in 
the pulpit and in administration. During his rec- 
torship the number of students increased to be- 
tween three and four hundred. He built the small 
boys' house in 1854, ^ commodious brick edifice 
adjoining the Old Building on the east, and left 
the College in 1858 in a high state of prosperity. 
He was recalled to the presidency after my day, 
and I am told that his second administration, 
though retarded by post-bellum conditions, was 
again successful. 

He next became a missionary priest, his band 
consisting of himself. Fathers McAtee, Strong, and 
my well remembered old schoolmate. Father John 
Morgan, erstwhile called the Judge. Father Ma- 
guire, like Father McElroy, did immense good on 
the missions by his persuasive delivery and un- 
tiring energy. He had never labored in the min- 

184 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

istry in New York, and when his band came there 
to conduct a mission at the Church of St. Law- 
rence he found himself without acquaintances in 
the great city, and called on me to introduce him 
to public notice through the press, not through 
any vanity but ad majorem Dei gloriam. I was a 
resident of New York, and had some acquaintances 
in Printing-House Square. I received the follow- 
ing note from my old President : 

" St. Lawrence's Church, 

64 East 84th Street. 

"New York, Feb. 19th, 1880. 

" My dear James, — Could you not make me a little known 
in this city ? I am a stranger here. I come among people 
who know nothing about me. You as a friend could help me 
in my new work of Missions by a notice in some influential 
newspapers. 

** I will see you before 1 leave the city, and visit your 
family. 

" Your sincere friend, 

" B. A. Maguire, S.J." 

I at once called on several of the editors, and was 
more than pleased at the opportunity which they 
afforded to me of announcing through their col- 
umns the arrival at St. Lawrence's Church of the 
distinguished ex-President of Georgetown Univer- 
sity. As a popular preacher Father Maguire always 
made a most favorable impression, and attracted 
the multitude. This mission proved no exception, 

and he and his fellow-missionaries. Fathers John 

185 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

A. Morgan and George Strong, had the consola- 
tion of gathering thousands to the tribunal of 
penance, among whom were several converts. 

As promised in his note. Father Maguire, ac- 
companied by Fathers Morgan and Strong, came 
to spend an evening with my family and myself at 
the close of the mission, and many were the remi- 
niscences of College days recalled by us all. This 
was my last meeting with the old President. He 
died in Washington, April 26, 1886, after a well- 
spent, holy life of sixty-eight years, and his body 
was borne with fitting honors to the College he 
had loved and served so well. 

During the last two years of my College course 
Father John Early, S.J., was rector. He suc- 
ceeded Father Maguire at the end of each of his 
terms. Father Early, a portly, suave gentleman, 
was a good administrator, very much liked by the 
students, indeed by everybody, for his heart was 
full of the milk of human kindness. Over a clever 
joke his large body would shake with laughter, 
while his eyes would fill with tears at a tale of sor- 
row. I took a second course of philosophy, and 
was therefore at Georgetown during the early part 
of the war. On the 21st of July, 1861, about 
two or three o'clock in the afternoon, I stood with 
Father Early on the back porch of the Old Build- 
ing while the first battle of Bull Run was in prog- 
ress. At short intervals we heard the ominous 

186 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

roar of distant cannon, which perceptibly grew 
more distinct as the afternoon advanced, presaging 
the defeat of General McDowell. When we saw 
horsemen over near Arlington galloping like mad 
towards Washington, and constantly increasing in 
numbers, and heard guns as the afternoon waned 
thundering louder than ever, Father Early remarked 
to me, " The tide of battle tends this way. The 
Union forces evidently have met with a serious 
reverse. They may be in here before night. God 
help the poor sufferers, both Northern and South- 
ern. If they come, every bed in the College shall 
be turned over to the wounded." 

We had not yet become accustomed to great 
battles and their dreadful carnage. Already for a 
short time the College had been converted into a 
barracks, sword and gown mingling on the campus 
in strange confusion. One day I saw President 
Lincoln, Secretary Seward, and other public men 
alight from carriages at the College to review the 
Sixty-ninth New York Regiment, twelve hundred 
strong. Colonel Corcoran commanding, which, 
with Thomas Francis Meagher's Legion of two 
hundred men, occupied the College. After their 
departure Colonel Cameron's Highlanders, the Sev- 
enty-ninth Pennsylvania Regiment, almost as fine 
a body of soldiers as the New York Sixty-ninth, 
took possession of the College and crowded the 
Fathers and students into very narrow quarters. 

187 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

In the battle of Bull Run, Colonel Corcoran was 
captured after fighting with conspicuous gallantry, 
and Colonel Cameron, brother of Simon Cameron, 
Secretary of War, was killed on the field. 

But the public mind, in the sudden plunge from 
peace to war, had not yet reached the fierce mar- 
tial tension which came afterwards, and not a little 
badinage and by-play of the mock-heroic sort ap- 
peared in the newspapers and periodicals of the 
day. One of the most humorous of these effu- 
sions was a macaronic poem in doggerel Latin, 
called " Taurea Fuga by Carolus." I understood 
that my old schoolmate, Charles B. Kenny, of 
Pittsburg, who was graduated two or three years 
before, was the author. As a riotous parody of a 
Sunday picnic, where a motley throng of sight- 
seers and their wives, politicians and soldiers were 
brought together promiscuously, " Taurea Fuga" 
was a clever hit ; 

** Turba felix ; studiosa videre Virginia races ;" 

as one of the lines of Carolus depicted them. 
Poor old General Winfield Scott, who lagged su- 
perfluous on the stage from a former generation, 
commanded in the North ; General Beauregard, 
called by Carolus " melior patre^ in the South. 
The parody is too long for reproduction, but I 
must find room for a few stanzas. 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

"Arcades ambo ; under these duo fulmina belli 
Ad pugnam venere. Prior old Scottus commences, 
Certus victorias, sedebat dozing in Churcho. 

?Js ?]> ?J^ ^J^ ?JN ^jC ?JC 

Austrinus videns nos tam refulgent in armis, 
Prudens instanter retreated dolefully backward, 
Fugam simulans." 

After a while the cunning General Beauregard 
comes out of his masked batteries, and the impet- 
uous General McDowell pressing on, the battle 
begins in earnest. 

"Jam stetit; instamur ; concurritur — though, at a distance, — 
Bangere muskets, roare cannon, et crackere rifles 
Incipiunt." 

The panic followed, to which the defeat was 
popularly ascribed in those days, for as yet we 
had not become aware of Stonewall Jackson, who 
undoubtedly would have captured Washington 
in short order if they had permitted him to have 
his own way, — " Stonewall's way," as a clever 
poet some time after called it ; but everybody 
then insisted it was the panic that caused the 
rout, and Carolus goes on to describe that monster. 

" Adfuit in pugna portentum horribile visu. 
That Jupiter unkindly sent, chancing noddere Juno, 
Scattering terrores ; it panicum nomine dicunt ; 
Awful as when it routed the Gallic vandals from Delphi. 
Tremendum advancit, et straightway made for the Zoo- 
Zoos, 

189 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Ut videre monstrum, and all its horrors, per umbras, 
Pars shiveravit in bootibus ; pars vertere terga, 
Screechere pars, fugiensque in Novo Eboraco halted. 
But omnes nos seeing the rout and its horrible causa, 
DifFugimus visu exsangues ; tremor seizes our knee-joints, 
Sumpserit any shape but that, et nos never would tremble. 

»l-» vL» "Jy vL» vL* vL« vt* vL» 

^Y* >f* *^ *^ *Y* *T* "T* ^y* 

Woe to the North this unfortunatissima Sunday." 

William H. Russell, correspondent of the Lon- 
don Times, had left Washington in the morning in 
great fettle to go to the battle, but came back pre- 
cipitately, quite as demoralized as the rest, earning 
by his antics the nickname of " Bull Run Russell," 
which stuck to him for life. John Gilpin's ride 
was eclipsed by the wing-footed Englishman, who 
frantically sought to get away from the Rebels 
and seek asylum from imaginary pursuers in the 
house of the British Minister, Lord Lyons. Caro- 
lus touches off Russell's flight quite humorously : 

" He flies like the wind, et vires acquiret eundo ; 
Macte nova virtute puer, sic itur ad Lyons ! 
Shun fields, shun stumps; for medio tutissimus ibis; 
Hippomene, go it boy, nunc viribus utere totis, — 
Occupat extremum scabies, I'm safe for the present. 
Dixit ; then writes graphicissimas sketches to Hingland." 

The condition of affairs at Georgetown during 
the few years immediately preceding the war was 
extremely flourishing. The house was full of 

students from all parts of the Union ; the prepon- 

190 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

derance of boys from the South was marked. 
Canada and Mexico, Central and South America 
were represented. Of the foreigners, Cuba con- 
tributed the greater number. The Faculty was 
strong in all the schools. In theology, philosophy, 
and the sciences. Fathers Duverney, Cicateri, De 
Maistri, Ardia, Nota, Sestini, Curley, Clark, and 
Welch ; in the classics. Fathers Lynch, Fenwick, 
Charles King, Barber, Fulton, O'Callaghan, Brady, 
Force, Young, McMullen, Prendergast, Strong, 
O'Hagan, McNerhany, Mullaly, and Bahan ; in 
the modern languages. Fathers Aschwanden, Bau- 
meister (commonly called " Barrister"), and Peters, 
and many others scarcely less learned and accom- 
plished, each contributed to make the corps of 
professors and tutors under Maguire and Early ex- 
ceptionally brilliant, able, and thorough in all the 
various departments of the College. 

How many bright, ingenuous youths and young 
men were gathered together during those jocund 
days on the College Heights. How many lusty 
athletes went bounding over the College campus 
in the games of foot-ball, hand-ball, running, jump- 
ing, and other sports. How many gymnasts of 
powerful thews and muscles then inhabited the 
house, expert in all exercises and feats of strength 
with dumb-bells, weights, parallel-bars, rope-lad- 
ders, and swinging-rings in and around the gym- 
nasium. At length came the great upheaval, when 

191 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

those same collegians sprang to arms in deadly war, 
some on the Northern side, more on the Southern 
side, the Blue and the Gray torn asunder only to 
blend again in fraternal union, and have inscribed 
the endearing and symbolic names on the College 
colors of Alma Mater. But what gaps in their 
ranks those four terrible years produced ! Heaven 
save us from another civil war ! 

I had at Georgetown a dear friend and class- 
mate, Robert Young Brown, of Mississippi, who 
went through the fiercest battles of the war. Bull 
Run, Richmond, Second Manassas, Antietam, 
Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the 
Wilderness, on to the bitter end, and who came 
out of the fiery ordeal with honorable scars to die 
of yellow fever — oh, irony of earth's fleeting day- 
dreams ! — ^in a few months after he had opened a 
law-office at New Orleans.* I never think of Bob 
Brown without understanding better the feelings 
with which Alfred Tennyson wrote of the friend 
of his youth, Arthur Hallam, in his great poem 
" In Memoriam." If ever I met a noble soul, full 
of genius for high deeds, full of bravery for life's 

* A few weeks before his death I received from dear Bob 
a most affectionate letter, in which he asked me to pay him a 
visit at New Orleans. That letter, instinct with the genius 
of the gifted writer, is before me at this moment. For a 
third of a century I have kept it as a priceless memento of 
one whom I loved beyond the measure of a brother. 

192 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

battle, full of mentality and promise of eminence, 
whatever his calling might be, Robert Young 
Brown was that man in very truth. His father, 
ex-Governor Albert G. Brown, was the colleague 
in the Senate of Jefferson Davis, but I am per- 
suaded, able and distinguished statesman though 
he was, that his noble son was his superior in 
talents and force of character. 

I think of others, and recollections of gifted 
collegians crowd thick and fast upon me. Some 
survive, many have passed away, but still in all the 
hues of youth there they go trooping through my 
memory, uneffaced and ineffaceable. Will the 
reader believe me ? though a mediterranean gulf 
of nearly forty years rolls between that day and 
this, I can recall in vivid recollection every com- 
panion of those College days, every face, but not 
every name, as though the halls of Georgetown 
were still alive with them, and I have never failed 
to recognize any boy I knew at College whenever 
and wherever I have met him throughout life. 
Happiness and length of days to those comrades 
of yore who may yet survive ; peace and joy. of 
Heaven to all of them who have entered into their 
rest.* 



* A few well-remembered names occurred to me as I wrote 
the closing words of this chapter. If it gives half as much 
pleasure to old students who may read my pages to see these 
13 193 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

One evening about two or three years ago, when 
I was visiting Mr. John Vinton Dahlgren, in New 



names as it affords to myself, I will be fully rewarded for in- 
scribing them here. Bob Harper, Billy Wills, Bob Ray, Old 
Hammer (Carrell), Dominick and James L. O'Byrne, Billy 
and Hugh Gaston, Billy Marye, Harvey Bawtree, Jim and 
Will Dougherty, Jimmy Randall, Davy Hubbard, George 
Merrick, John and Tom King, Phil Madden, Cornelius 
O'Flynn, Charley Kenny, John and Henry Bowling, Wil- 
liam Boyce, Charley Hoyt, Bill Choice, Billy, Jim, and 
Charley Duncan, Madison Cutts, Wilfred Fetterman, John 
Hamilton, Jim Wise, Enoch Low, John Graham, Henry and 
Romilly Foote, Bob Brown, Jim Hoban, Pres. Sands, Joe 
Orme, Jim and John Dooley, Boyd Faulkner, Jerome Bauduy, 
Leon Michel, Johnny Marion, Henry Clagett, William Price, 
Victor Benoit, Bill Reilly, Frank Palms, Beverley Kennedy, 
Emile and Alphonse Rost, Leopold Armand, " Beef" Des- 
londe, ** Buster," Pye, and Eustace Neale, Lucius and Harry 
Northrup, Johnny Plater, Vernon Smith, " Chin" Miller, Bill 
Murphy, Isidore Sota, Alfred Macedo, *' Old" Guiterez, De- 
metrius Valdez, Jules Esclava (" Monkey"), Jules Delacroix, 
Jules Deschapelles, John Laloire, M. Fernandez, Ike and 
Nick Parsons, Otis Keilholtz, James Owen Martin, M. Du- 
pre, Zeb. Ward, Alf. and Charley Bahan (*' Crab"), Beres- 
ford Carr, Madison Grigsby, Jim Lester, John and Willy 
Dawson, ** Sunny" Buard, Tom, ** Cincy," and Ed. Magru- 
der, " Rit" Leary, Tom Ryan, M. Knoblock, Placide and Paul 
Bossier, Bill Hodges, Bob Lovelace, Warfield Semmes, Gus 
Wilson, Bowie and *' Fip" Johnson, Bob Johnson, Billy Bar- 
rett, Nick Hill, Charley and Theodore Dimitry, Frank Rudd, 
Billy Leary, Dan Casserly, Henry Brent, Jim Murphy, Tom 
and Pete Herran, Virgil Dominguez, Tal. Lambert, John 
Kidwell, " Bub" Ritchie, " Pat" McLeod (James), M. Mc- 

194 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

York, a middle-aged gentleman came in, and I said, 
before his name was announced, " Why, here's 
Charley Hoyt !" It was Mr. Hoyt, although I 
had not seen him since 1857, when he was a boy 
at Georgetown. 

Shane, M. O'Dowd, M. Spelissey, M. Zuniga, Albert Young, 
Joe and William Blandford, Benedict Semmes, Bob and Tom 
Simms, Ludim Bargy, Frank Baby, Julius Choppin, "Little'* 
Hullihen, Aleck and " Bull" Loughbrough, M. Picquette, J. 
Escobar, Cypriano Zegarra, John Callan, Patrick Walsh, 
Jim Doonan, John Morgan (the "Judge"), Frank and Clem 
Lancaster, Mike Cass, Nat. GofF, Edward White. Why go 
on ? " I came to the place of my birth," says an Arabic 
manuscript, ** and cried, * The friends of my youth, where are 
they ?' And an Echo answered, ' Where are they ?' " 



195 



CHAPTER IX 

HARVEY BAWTREE FATHER E. H. WELCH LONGFEL- 
LOW CENTENNIAL OF COLLEGE PRESIDENT CLEVE- 
LAND'S SPEECH WOODSTOCK SCHOLASTICATE END ' 

SOME one has spoken of the period of youth 
as " the blessed age of admiration." How 
many a village Hampden, mute, inglorious 
Milton, and Cromwell guiltless of his country's 
blood, immortalized by Gray, does not the school- 
boy picture to himself in the companions of child- 
hood, boyhood, and more especially of College 
life! 

** The school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour," 

from Byron down, or for that matter, — " O formose 
puer,'' — from Virgil down, has always been and 
always will continue to be a delightful part of the 
life of a collegian. I indulged in it. I used to 
think Harvey Bawtree, my fellow-student, the 
greatest Richard the Third that ever lived. I had 
not then heard Edwin Forrest. Harvey would run 
up and down stairs in the Infirmary, to the amuse- 
ment of that most excellent man, Brother Johnny 

Cunningham, — 

196 




J. FAIRFAX McLaughlin 

Class of '60 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

'* I do remember an apothecary. 
And hereabouts he dwells," — 

as well as to the rapid depletion of his own breath- 
ing apparatus ; then burst on the stage where the 
play was in progress in the Study Room, shouting 
as best a breathless king could shout, — 



<i 



A horse ! a horse ! my kingdom for a horse !" 



How we boys applauded ! And to tell the truth 
it was unquestionably very vigorous, realistic act- 
ing. Harvey Bawtree was realistic or nothing. 
Once in his Richelieu, when I was Francois, he 
seized me by the throat with a frightful clutch 
that made me extremely angry, so much so, if I 
had been big enough, there would have been a 
fight on the stage not set down in the bills. 
" What if I fail ?" said Francois. " Fail !" roared 
the frantic Richelieu, taking a grape-vine twist at 
my throat, and ferociously backing me across the 
stage, while I kept protesting helplessly, and tell- 
ing him in gasps I would hold him accountable 
outside if he didn't stop choking me, — 

** In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves 
For a bright manhood, there is no such word 
As Fail ;" 

and then, by way of emphasis, he tossed me from 

him, as a Spanish bull might toss a matadore, with 

197 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

the encouraging remark, wildly applauded by the 
audience, that I wasn't to say fail again. I said to 
him behind the stage at the end of the scene, 
" Harvey Bawtree, that was an infernal, outrageous 
thing to do ; a great big giant like you to strangle 
me nearly to death." " Richelieu, my boy," was 
the reply, " not Harvey Bawtree, did it ;" and he 
laughed so heartily that I began to laugh too. 
Imposing and grandiose on the mimic stage, dear 
old Harvey in real life was a generous, whole-soul 
fellow whom everybody at the College held in 
the most cordial affection. He is dead since, 
having been a lawyer in Canada. 

I heard Forrest as Richard the Third and John 
McCullough as Richmond in the winter of 1864, 
at the National Theatre in Washington, and that 
night President Lincoln with his wife and little 
boy occupied the self- same fatal box where he 
was so brutally assassinated a few months after- 
wards. Forrest was grand, and my school-boy 
vision of peerless Harvey Bawtree vanished like a 
summer dream when this famous actor, the really 
magnificent tragedian, played Richard as no other 
man in America ever could play it. 

Mr. George Vandenhoff, the elocutionist, was 
another of my College wonders. During an ear- 
lier year we had had Mr. Tavenner, of Boston, to 
teach us elocution. Tavenner was quite a culti- 
vated little man, but when the distinguished Van- 

198 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

denhofF arrived at Georgetown to give elocution 
lessons he became the College fetich, and the 
members of his class all voted him incomparable. 
He had a splendid drum-voiced delivery peculiar 
to some Englishmen. One evening when he gave 
a public reading in the Study Room, he took the 
house by storm. Among his selections was the 
death of Marmion. He had carried us along with 
him delightfully, for in tone, accent, and enuncia- 
tion he was an accomplished artist, but the piece de 
resistance was Marmion, reserved for the last. We 
listened spell-bound as he pictured the heady fight, 
and told of Marmion 's prodigies of valor. Pres- 
ently the hero is struck down, and is writhing in 
death on the field when tidings come of another 
charge by his followers. He upraised himself, and 
summoned his waning strength for his last words : 

" * Charge, Chester, charge ! On, Stanley, on !' 
Were the last words of Marmion." 

It was superbly done ; superbly ? I disdained su- 
perbly. There never was anything like it. Van- 
denhoflf was enthroned as my idol, the prince of 
actors, the wonder of the age. 

Many years later Charlotte Cushman played 
Lady Macbeth in New York, and George Vanden- 
hofF, my old College favorite, acted the part of 
Macbeth. I attended the play at Booth's Theatre 
with my family, not forgetting on the way to 

199 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

extol George of the resonant voice. Presently 
the tall form of the Scottish Thane appeared, and 
my man somehow began to shrink. The woman 
was the better man of the two, and when she 
swept over to him and said, — 

" Infirm of purpose ! give me the dagger," 

another of my College wonders was gone, and I 
didn't half like it either, to have my idol so ruth- 
lessly shattered by that tremendous woman, the 
Queen of the American stage. 

I spent the summer vacations of 1859 ^^ Boston 
with Father Edward H. Welch, S.J., then as now 
a member of the Faculty of Georgetown Univer- 
sity. A Puritan of ancient Massachusetts lineage, 
tracing back his pedigree seven generations to an 
honored ancestor, Christopher Welch, of Plain- 
tree, Devonshire, whose son, the first of the Amer- 
ican family, paid a tax-rate in Boston as early as 
1687, young Edward was graduated at Harvard 
in 1840, having had for teachers two of the most 
famous scholars of the age. The professor of his 
French and belles-lettres classes was Henry W. 
Longfellow the poet, and of his class in the 
Dane Law School was Mr. Justice Story, lecturer 
on Equity Jurisprudence. In speaking of their 
methods. Father Welch once told me that Long- 
fellow prepared with care, polished highly, and 



200 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

read his lectures. Story poured forth a stream of 
law and equity ex abundantia cordis^ often enlivened 
by pleasant anecdotes of Chief Justice Marshall 
and Mr. Justice Washington. 

Mr. Welch went abroad, and at Heidelberg 
further satisfied his thirst for learning in that an- 
cient University. He became a Catholic, passed 
a period at Rome and Paris, for a short time was 
among the Sulpitians in Canada, and then en- 
tered the Jesuit Order in the Province of Mary- 
land. Representative of an old Puritan family, 
the conversion of Mr. Welch to the Catholic 
Church, like that of his friend Mr. Shaw, created 
a sensation in Beacon Hill circles. He was the 
precursor of many later noble converts to Catho- 
licity in the Puritan Commonwealth. The "Brah- 
mins," as Father Fulton used to call the solid men 
of Boston, were at first shocked by Mr. Welch's 
going over to Rome, but on sober second thought 
received him, when he came among them in sub- 
sequent days, as an honored guest and worthy rep- 
resentative of their race. Old Mr. Richard Henry 
Dana, at that time regarded as our poet-laureate, 
whose daughter also was a convert to the Church, 
Mr. Longfellow, the greatest of all our singers, and 
many others among the literary people at Harvard 
and in its neighborhood, welcomed the Jesuit to 
Boston whenever he visited his father's house in 

Louisburg Square, and it was thus that my visit 

20 1 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

there in 1859 proved a delightful one to me in 
every sense of the word. 

Father Welch and myself, by special invitation 
from the poet, visited Mr. Longfellow and his 
family at Nahant. As we approached the house, 
which nestled among the rocks over the ocean 
like Cato's cot at Ithaca, the poet saw Father 
Welch, and came out from the door with both 
hands extended to welcome his old Harvard pupil. 
Mrs. Longfellow, a queenly woman, and her three 
little daughters were at home. I can never forget 
that pleasant glimpse of the author of " Evangeline" 
and " Hiawatha" which this visit afforded to me. 
An extremely noble-looking woman indeed was 
Mrs. Longfellow, and her powers of conversation 
and feminine charm of manner were brought into 
delightful play that August morning, for the poet 
was a reticent man, more pleased to listen than to 
talk. Now and again he would interject a remark 
or suggest a name, place, or date to show his 
interest in the conversation, which was principally 
conducted by Father Welch and Mrs. Longfellow. 
In their discourse they revisited well-remembered 
scenes to both of them in Germany, France, and 
elsewhere in Europe, especially Solferino and Ma- 
genta, great Italian battle-fields then just fought 
between Austria and France, and Naples and Vir- 
gil's tomb and epitaph, — Mantua me genuit, — all of 
which topics Mrs. Longfellow touched upon felici- 



202 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

tously, repeating the whole VirgiUan epitaph with 
scholarly command of the Latin. On her last 
visit she found everything about the famous 
tomb, so she remarked, exactly as it was many 
years previously when she and the Jesuit Father, 
I think, visited the spot together or about the same 
time. Occasionally Mr. Longfellow would inter- 
pose a remark, and next would be diverted to his 
three little girls, who were playing in the hall, and 
sometimes ran into the room to the sofa where he 
sat, and climbed his knee to say something to him 
about their gambols and sports. The childish prat- 
tle seemed to delight him and distract his attention 
for the moment from the general conversation. 
One of the little girls, with bright curls all over 
her shoulders, — she was, I think, the second of the 
children in years, — once ran in from the hall and 
threw herself into her father's open arms to tell 
him of something particularly pleasing to her 
which she wanted him to hear and enjoy with her. 
Not boisterous, not subdued, but in tones perfectly 
natural and well bred, the children talked as they 
came and went, and their father would now enjoy 
the interruptions of the little ones, and then fall 
into the drift of the more sedate conversation, 
equally interested in both. Of me, a young colle- 
gian from Georgetown, and a stranger to him, Mr. 
Longfellow's reception was as cordial and frank 

as though I had been an intimate friend of long 

20^ 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

standing. Just two years later the sad calamity 
befell of which Oliver Wendell Holmes, in con- 
templating the ideal happiness of the Longfellow 
household, seemed to have a dim presentiment.* 
It came to pass with appalling suddenness, when 
Mrs. Longfellow lost her life by fire, and the poet, 
in trying to subdue the flames, very nearly suffered 
the same fate. With maternal love the mother 
was cutting off the curls of her beautiful children, 
and putting away the ringlets in boxes with seal- 
ing-wax. The ignited wax fell on her light sum- 
mer dress, and soon she was in. flames. Mr. Long- 
fellow, I repeat, in vain rushed to her rescue, and 
was himself severely burned. The heart of the 
whole nation was profoundly moved, and beat in 
sorrowing sympathy with the bleeding hearts of 
the old Craigie House at Cambridge. I vividly 
recollect my own sensations when I read of the 
death of that lovely woman, worthy spouse of the 
man of most beautiful character in all our Ameri- 
can literature. 

When I became in after years a student of 

* *' Curtis once told me that a little while before Mrs. Long- 
fellow's death he was driving by Craigie House with Holmes, 
who said he trembled to look at it, for those who lived there 
had their happiness so perfect that no change, of all the 
changes which must come to them, could fail to be for the 
worse. — "The White Mr. Longfellow," by William Dean 
Howells, in Harper'* s New Monthly Magazine, August, 1896. 

204 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

Longfellow's works, I began better to understand 
his character with that pleasant morning's revela- 
tion of himself at Nahant as interpreter. His love 
for little children was shown on the sofa there in 
his cottage equally as in his gem of a poem, " Ode 
to a Child." His modesty made him a listener 
while his brilliant wife and Father Welch led in 
conversation, he contributing but brief suggestion, 
witty side stroke, or timely comment, a self-re- 
straint as natural to him in the domestic circle as 
the introspection employed in the pages of " Outre 
Mer," notably in the description contained in the 
" Pilgrim's Breviary" of a night in the Alhambra, 
when the stillness was unbroken save by the sentry's 
cry at the hour's stroke " Ave Maria purissima ;" 
or in the scenes of his " Christus," where, unlike 
the rasher Milton in " Paradise Regained," who in- 
vents speeches for Him who spake as never man 
spoke, the American poet reverentially sinks him- 
self out of sight with marvellous art, and puts not 
a single word on the lips of the Redeemer save 
what He uttered in the Gospels. Again, in " Hia- 
watha," Father Marquette is crayoned forth using 
his own words, a discovery but recently made by 
Father Benedict Guldner, S.J., when examining 
the writings of the great Jesuit missionary and ex- 
plorer and comparing them with the noble Black 
Gown's speeches in the Indian Edda. Longfel- 
low's modesty was as great as his art, and his art is 

205 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

without a parallel in the present century, if not in 
Europe, certainly in America. 

The two poets who have swayed the English- 
speaking world most powerfully during the last 
half-century are Longfellow and Tennyson. The 
former was the broader poet, as he was not cramped 
by the same insular training as the latter. Long- 
fellow has not the vehement Saxon dash of the 
author of the " Princess," but for placidity, sen- 
sible fulness, and Christian tone, " Evangeline" pre- 
sents features wanting to the Laureate. The 
pagan renaissance of the sixteenth century nar- 
rows the scope and marks the limitations of Ten- 
nyson. The Christian inspiration which outruns 
it in philosophy, and rejects its anthropomorphism 
and passionate idolatry of nature and pagan classi- 
cal forms, gives the breath of a truer poetry to 
Longfellow's creations. Greek aesthetics without 
Christian aesthetics are but as dust and ashes of 
the sepulchre. 

Take, for example, the death scenes, ideal in 
the " Princess" but real in " Evangeline," and mark 
the difference between the pagan spirit and the 
Christian spirit. In the former the soul falls down 
and worships matter, as if Ovid or Sophocles were 
depicting the scene : 

** I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die. 

«l^ ^X' ^1^ vV *^ *^ 

^* ^^ >f* "^ *y* ^j* 

206 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

She stoopM ; and out of languor leapt a cry. 
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 
And I believed that in the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips." 

In Longfellow the lovers meet at the death-bed 
of Gabriel. Observe the difference between the 
poets in treating of the emotions of love. For 
long years Evangeline had searched the continent 
in vain for Gabriel, but at last finds him dying in 
a hospital. Transported with surprise, joy, grief, 
she gives way to natural feelings, and then thanks 
God with Christian resignation as Gabriel dies in 
her arms. On a pallet before her, as she went 
among the sick and dying ministering to their 
wants, she beheld her betrothed husband. 

" Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible 
anguish 

That the dying heard it and started up from their pillows. 

Then through those realms of shade in multiplied reverber- 
ations 

Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that suc- 
ceeded. 

Whispered a gentle voice in accents tender and saint-like, 

* Gabriel ! O my beloved!' and died away into silence. 

Vainly he strove to rise ; and Evangeline, kneeling beside 
him. 

Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. 

Sweet was [the light of his eyes, but it suddenly sank into 
darkness. 

As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a case- 
ment. 

207 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

And as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom. 
Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, * Father, I 
thank Thee !' " 

Since Milton, Longfellow is the most learned of 
our poets. He was master of eleven languages, 
ten of which he spoke.* He naturalized a new 
metre into our tongue, which every English poet 
who tried it before him, from Spenser down, had 
failed to do, and many of them, such as Byron, 
Scott, Poe, and Lowell, declared it impossible to 
do. They all made the mistake, extremely com- 
mon to classical scholars, of confounding ancient 
and modern hexameters, and of supposing the 
spondee of Homer and Virgil an invariable and 
necessary factor of English hexameters, which 
made them harsh and hiccoughy, or, as quaint old 
Tom Nash wittily said, " English beggars." With 
such a cast-iron rule it is beyond the power of any 
human being to write a good English hexameter 
poem. The silent but mighty revolution in lan- 
guage from quantity to accent, which had been 
going on as human society grew, was absolutely 
ignored by English poets from Spenser to Southey. 

* In a letter to his father, written in 1825, he says, "I 
have a most voracious appetite for knowledge. ... I have 
somewhere seen or heard the observation that as many lan- 
guages as a person acquires so many times is he a man." — 
** Life and Letters of Longfellow," by Samuel Longfellow, 
vol. i. p. 58. 

208 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

The indications of its progress were not wholly 
wanting, even in ancient times. Aristotle, the 
wisest of philosophers, detected its latent influence 
when he declared that the iambic measure was the 
natural rhythm of conversation. Anglo-Saxon 
runs naturally to iambic accent, because it is con- 
versational and discursive. " There has no more 
wonderful revolution taken place," exclaims the 
profound Dr. Whewell, " in the use of human lan- 
guage than that by which the versification of mod- 
ern Europe took the place of the versification of 
ancient Greece and Rome." * 

Spenser and Sidney followed classic quantity 
and failed. " Why a God's name," petulantly ex- 
claims the former, " may not we, as the Greeks, 
have the kingdom of our own language, and 
measure our accents by the sound, reserving the 
quantity to the verse *?" And he vainly tried to 
put into English gyves and strait-jackets the old 
Latin and Greek measure. 

To the English language belongs the glory of 
leading all the modern tongues in every other 
metre save the hexameter, where, until Longfel- 
low appeared, we dismally failed. Our tongue 
gave the law to the language of tragedy, with 
Shakespeare and Fletcher the acknowledged pio- 

* Vice-Chancellor William Whewell in the North British 
Review y 1853, article " Hermann and Dorothea." 
14 209 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

neers ; and gave it again, as Percy's " Reliques" 
attest, to the measure of ballads ; all followed 
obediently the Anglo-Saxon lead. But Germany 
and Sweden left England far behind, clinging to 
classic spondee, a deadly enemy, when Voss and 
Goethe and Tegner threw it off and mingled it 
with trochaic verse, having discovered that accent 
not quantity was the future arbiter of all human 
speech. The prophecy of Aristotle was fulfilled 
when Goethe wrote " Hermann and Dorothea," 
and Longfellow made the same discovery when 
he wrote " Evangeline," and in that poem and the 
"Courtship of Miles Standish" naturalized the 
dactylic hexameter as a new metre in the English 
language. Hactenus h^ec. I am quite forgetting 
Alma Mater. 

The most memorable event or series of events 
in the history of Georgetown College took place 
during the three days set apart for the Centennial 
celebration, February 20, 21, and 22, 1889. I 
attended the exercises, and found that since my 
day, under the initiative of the energetic and in- 
trepid rector. Father Patrick H. Healy, S. J., a mag- 
nificent new building, facing the main entrance to 
the College, had lifted its lofty front, covering the 
whole space to the east of the old north and south 
buildings, and connecting them all into a grand, 
continuous group. 

The ceremonies on the 2 2d were the most in- 

210 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

teresting. On the stage among the members of 
the Faculty and many alumni, sat Cardinal Gib- 
bons, Archbishops Corrigan and Ryan, five or 
six Bishops, and a large number of distinguished 
clergymen from various parts of the country. 
Laymen of the highest distinction mingled among 
the churchmen. The President of the United 
States and the Secretary of State, Mr. Cleve- 
land and Mr. Bayard, Chief Justice Fuller, and 
Associate Justices Harlan and Miller of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, foreign Min- 
isters, Senators, Congressmen, generals, and naval 
officers, and famous men of letters and in the lib- 
eral professions, literally crowded the spacious plat- 
form from end to end. There sat the scholarly 
Chancellor of Harvard, Dr. Thomas Dwight, in 
his picturesque robes of office, and the learned 
Chancellor of Georgetown, Father Edward H. 
Welch, another son of Harvard, in the historic 
soutane of Loyola. Dr. Welling, President of 
Columbia, and the rectors of many other Colleges, 
swelled the lists of notabilities, perhaps as imposing 
in numbers and celebrity as ever were assembled 
together in any institution of learning in this coun- 
try. They had come to extend greetings and all 
hail to Georgetown on the completion of its first 
century, or, as I have contended elsewhere, on the 
completion of its two hundred and fifty-fifth year. 
As Father Welch arose to deliver the Chancel- 

211 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

lor's Latin address the scene was striking, the 
rationale of the occasion presented to the thought- 
ful mind agreeable reflections and contrastive mem- 
ories. There sat Puritans and Cavaliers who had 
been crossing swords from Worcester, England, 
in the seventeenth century, to Gettysburg, Penn- 
sylvania, in the nineteenth, now gathered like a 
band of brothers beneath the roof-tree of the 
Jesuits, who had come over in the Ark and 
Dove, under the segis of Lord Baltimore's char- 
ter, to plant the Cross in English America. Cleve- 
land, Dwight, and Welch, of the race that came in 
the Mayflower ; the CarroUs, Lees, and Tuckers, 
and other representative Cavaliers, whose sires 
sprang from the hives of St. Mary's and James- 
town, all assembled. Cavaliers and Puritans, to 
honor Georgetown on its anniversary. The two 
great fighting divisions of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
which under the standards of the Stuarts or in the 
armies of Old Ironsides or the Duke of Cumber- 
land, from Marston Moor to CuUoden, had waged 
relentless war against each other, were met here in 
peace at last, of all places in the world the strangest, 
in the house of the long hated and persecuted 
Jesuits, old animosities gone with the years be- 
yond the Flood, and the only watchword now, as 
President Cleveland said, " good American citizen- 
ship," or as Cardinal Gibbons said, ^'' Prosper e pro- 
cede, et regnaT 

212 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

My own thoughts reverted on this historic occa- 
sion to scenes quite different. I beheld, in imagi- 
nation, Father Andrew White banished from Mary- 
land and sent back in chains to England ; Father 
Sebastian Rasle murdered at Norridgewock ; Father 
Frambach fleeing from Virginia, whither he had 
journeyed to carry the Bread of Life to some dying 
Catholic, and saved by the fleetness of his horse 
from the bullets of his pursuers ; Father Francis 
Neale stoned in the streets of Alexandria during 
the last decade of the eighteenth century ; as Father 
Ryder was twice pelted with stones in the streets 
of Washington City, on towards the middle of the 
present century ; Monsignore Bedini afterwards 
mobbed in Cincinnati ; and Father Bapst still later 
tarred, feathered, and ridden on a rail in the State 
of Maine. Zeal above knowledge is fanaticism, 
and the worst of all fanatics are religious zealots 
when once they become persecutors. 

How happy a revolution had brought us to this 
day ! Here in the mother-house of the Jesuits, 
among the sons of old Maryland Cavaliers, were 
the illustrious men of Virginia, Massachusetts, 
New York, and other States, none the less Protes- 
tants because they were tolerant, or, if I may again 
borrow President Cleveland's expression, "good 
citizens," foregathered in brotherly love among the 
Jesuit Fathers of Georgetown College and their 

Catholic fellow-citizens. How vast the change 

213 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

mirrored forth this day in Gaston Hall ! how 
grandly America had grown in charity, the divinest 
of all the cardinal theological virtues ! 

In the throng were descendants of William Gas- 
ton, whose name bestowed on the Hall in which we 
sat is a household word at Georgetown ; of Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton, the Catholic Signer ; and I 
think, too, of the most celebrated of Georgetown 
scholars, Robert Walsh, our Consul-General to 
Paris, author of " An Appeal from the Judgments 
of Great Britain," and of the " Didactics." Robert 
Walsh preceded James Russell Lowell and Wash- 
ington Irving as the scholar in politics, and from 
the day when he, a boy student, welcomed George 
Washington in a poetical address to Georgetown 
College, to that when he departed this life in 
France, the Nestor of the guild of American let- 
ters, he was honored everywhere as scholar, gentle- 
man, and Catholic. The venerable Sovereign 
Pontiff, Leo XIIL, sent fatherly greetings. The 
most ancient Universities of Europe and America 
vied with the youngest in fraternal messages. Sev- 
eral thousand people gathered there to take part in 
the festivities. Already Father James A. Doonan, 
Mr. (afterwards Judge) Martin F. Morris, Mon- 
signor Thomas S. Preston, Mr. Conde B. Fallen, 
and other scholarly men had laid their tributes upon 
the College shrine. In choice and eloquent phrases 

Cardinal Gibbons recalled College memorabilia, 

214 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

and paid tribute to the ability and holiness of the 
great Archbishop Carroll, founder of the College. 
In a forcible speech President Cleveland pictured 
the joy and pride of Georgetown College alumni 
on the auspicious anniversary, and, enlarging upon 
the value of a sound education, such as this insti- 
tution gave, pleaded the duties of American citi- 
zenship as incumbent upon every individual, and 
closed by wishing for the College, as it has had in 
the past, a future army of patriotic and learned 
alumni. 

As the ceremonies drew to an end the shades of 
evening were falling, and cannon thundered with- 
out, reverberating over the Heights and down the 
beautiful river to and beyond Mount Vernon. 
Hundreds of alumni after years of separation met 
on the inspiring occasion, and felt and said in every 
look and word that Alma Mater was Queen, robed 
in her hundred years of collegiate life and her two 
centuries and a half of academic training. Well 
might Father Richards look happy and triumphant, 
for he had done his work well as rector of George- 
town College in the Centennial year. Perhaps the 
second century of the College will have come and 
gone before those halls again shall witness another 
celebration to rival that of which a faint portrayal 
has been here attempted. 

The crying want of the American Church had 
long been a proper training-school for priests. 

215 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

There were several good ones, but the far-seeing 
Provincial Father Angelo Paresce conceived the 
scheme of a great one, such as the old canonists 
of the middle ages, or the Jesuits who carried the 
Ratio Studiorum to the summit of excellence, had 
established in Europe. To lay properly all foun- 
dations of university training, such a school, such 
a fountain of religious education, was wanting, 
and Father Paresce supplied it when he founded 
the incomparable Woodstock Scholasticate. His 
strong will controlled and directed all with a firm- 
ness not inferior to that of Archbishop Carroll in 
the early day. Fortunate, indeed, were its begin- 
nings. A giant mind of almost universal training 
in dogma and morals was found ready at hand in 
the person of Father Camillus Mazzella, S.J., to 
guide the institution in its infancy. A Petavius 
in learning and almost a Suarez in genius (I employ 
the words of the late Father William F. Clarke), 
he entered upon the noble work, and when after 
some years he was called away from Woodstock 
to become a Cardinal, and perhaps some day a 
Pope, Father Mazzella left his Scholasticate, prolific 
feeder of Georgetown, the greatest ecclesiastical 
Seminary on this continent. From that Tusculum 
we old alumni expect streams of the higher educa- 
tion of the future to flow in upon the mother-house. 
O ye doctors of the Teaching Order, usher in 

at Georgetown Saturnian days. Wheeling into 

216 



COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 

space, yonder the new century comes. May my 
eyes behold Alma Mater, before I have tasted of 
death, circling in pride of place, a modern Sala- 
manca or Alcala, a Catholic University such as was 
dreamed of by Carroll and striven for by Ryder, a 
seat of learning like one of those founded by the 
Jesuits in the days of Acquaviva or of Retz, when 
the Ratio Studiorum led Europe in science and 
classics, in philosophy and fine arts. 

" The course of truth," says Cardinal Newman, 
in his sketch of the " Rise and Progress of Universi- 
ties," " never dominant in this world, has its ebbs 
and flows. It is pleasant to live in a day when the 
tide is coming in. Such is our own day. ... A 
new era seems to be at hand, and a bolder policy 
is showing itself In particular, the Church feels 
herself strong enough to recommence the age of 
Universities." 

I close my little volume with cordial salutations 
to all the sons of Georgetown. School-boy friend- 
ships are among the most unselfish of human ties. 
Old and young, wherever you abide, may the Lord 
love you. Boys. 



217 



APPENDIX 

During the lifetime of Mr. Charles A. Dana, the 
distinguished editor of the New York Sun, the fol- 
lowing editorial appeared in its columns. Mr. 
Dana was a Protestant, but always discussed Cath- 
olic questions with a fairness in keeping with his 
eminent ability. 

{From the Sun, February ^5, i8g^.) 

"the GEORGETOWN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 

" Especial interest attaches to the University at Georgetown, 
in the District of Columbia, because this was the first Catholic 
institution of the higher learning founded in the United States, 
students having entered it as early as 1791. Since 1805 it 
has been under the direction of members of the Society of 
Jesus. In 181 5 it acquired from Congress the power of con- 
ferring ordinary degrees, and in 1833 it received from the 
Holy See authority to grant degrees in philosophy and the- 
ology. It deserves the name of university for the reason that, 
in addition to the College proper, or school of arts and sci- 
ences, it comprises an astronomical observatory, a law school, 
and a school of medicine. If the requirements for admission 
to the professional schools seem inadequate, when compared 
with the conditions imposed in Germany, the shortcoming is 
common to almost all American institutions, while the precau- 
tions taken at Georgetown to assure the proper significance to 
the A.B. degree are deserving of very high commendation. 

219 



APPENDIX 

** The faculty and officers of Georgetown University num- 
ber 66, and there are 512 students, exclusive of 177 in the 
preparatory department. If we look at the classification by 
residence, we find that 68 students come from the District of 
Columbia, 97 from the five States of New York, Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, 26 from New Eng- 
land, and that 24 other States are represented by from 12 
to I each. There are also undergraduates from Central 
America, Cuba, Canada, and France. We have referred to 
the preparatory department, which is a distinctive feature of 
this institution, and is intended to qualify boys for entering 
the College proper. The prescribed age for admission to this 
school is now thirteen, and a candidate must have received a 
good elementary training in what are known as the English 
branches, including a thorough acquaintance with arithmetic 
to the end of percentage. The graduates of this school, in 
which the study of Greek and Latin is compulsory, are ad- 
mitted to the College proper as a matter of course. From 
other preparatory schools of established reputation students 
are admitted on the principal's certificate, but that a knowledge 
of the classical languages is demanded is clear from the exam- 
ination which all applicants not provided with acceptable cer- 
tificates must pass. The subjects of the examination compre- 
hend English composition, a general outline of ancient and 
modern history, and the elements of either French or German 
grammar. In arithmetic an applicant must offer the whole 
of arithmetic, algebra to the end of quadratics, and the ele- 
ments of plane and solid geometry ; in Latin, the entire gram- 
mar, including prosody, Nepos's Lives, two books of Phas- 
drus's Fables, selected letters of Cicero, two books of Csesar's 
Commentaries, and a thousand lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses; 
in Greek will be required a complete knowledge of etymology 
and an acquaintance with the outlines of syntax, two books 
of Xenophon's Anabasis, and certain of Lucian's Dialogues. 
As regards facility in prose composition, the candidate must 

220 



APPENDIX 

translate at sight complex sentences into Latin and simple sen- 
tences into Greek, A careful inspection of these require- 
ments will convince the reader that Georgetown may fairly 
be compared, from this point of view, with most of the lead- 
ing American universities, and that it is actually more exacting 
than Harvard, where a knowledge of Greek is not demanded 
of applicants. 

" It should further be remarked that at Georgetown an 
undergraduate is not permitted to abandon the classical lan- 
guages soon after entering college, but is obliged to study them 
during the first three years of the quadrennial course leading 
to an A.B. degree. This is the only American College known 
to us where the student is for three years trained in speaking 
as well as in writing Latin, and in reading it at sight. The 
Latin authors with which a Georgetown man must become 
conversant comprise the whole of Horace, the ^neid and 
Eclogues of Virgil, Juvenal, Sallust, Livy, and the Agricola and 
Germania of Tacitus, Quintilian, and the Orations, Letters, 
De Senectute, and De Amicitia of Cicero. In Greek an un- 
dergraduate must read the Iliad, the Hellenica of Xenophon, 
the Olynthiacs and De Corona of Demosthenes, and the 
CEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles. In mathematics, which he 
cannot avoid by a soft elective, he must have finished algebra, 
and mastered analytic geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, 
and the differential and integral calculus. He must carry on 
the study of that modern language, French or German, which 
he offered for admission, and must also acquire the rudi- 
ments of the alternative one. Other prescribed studies during 
the two last years of the course are chemistry, mechanics, 
physics, astronomy, and geology ; and naturally a good deal 
of attention is paid to logic, metaphysics, and ethics. Alto- 
gether it is evident that an excellent education is attainable in 
the College proper at Georgetown, and that its A.B. degree 
possesses the value which ought always to pertain to a diploma 
of the kind. We add that the master's degree is given not as 

221 



APPENDIX 

a matter of course, but only to those holding the correspond- 
ing baccalaureate degree after one year of residence, during 
which certain prescribed lectures have been attended and cer- 
tain examinations have been passed. 

"The number of students in the medical school belonging 
to the Georgetown University is 135. The complete course 
of study in this department comprises four sessions of seven 
months each. At the end of each session written examina- 
tions are held, and no student failing to pass these can obtain 
an M.D. degree. Unfortunately, the possession of a College 
education is not required for admission, nor indeed is it by 
any medical school in the United States. The graduate of 
any high school or academy may enter the medical depart- 
ment of Georgetown, but on other candidates a preliminary 
examination is imposed. In the law school, which has 267 
students, no examination for admission is prescribed, and it 
follows that young men having merely a common school edu- 
cation are admissible. The course leading to the degree of 
bachelor of laws covers only two years, but there is a post- 
graduate course open to those desirous of securing also a 
master's degree. We should note that these diplomas are 
conferred only upon those who successfully pass examinations 
in the several subjects of study, and thus an effort is made to 
compensate for the deficiencies which, owing to the freedom 
of admission to the school, must be observable in many of its 
students. 

** On the whole, there can be no doubt that under the direc- 
tion of the Jesuit Fathers a great deal of sterling work is done 
at Georgetown in the field of the higher education. The 
progress made by this institution is the more remarkable be- 
cause it is unendowed and destitute of pecuniary resources 
save the income derived from the fees of students. Yet much 
as this struggling University may have felt the need of money, 
it has firmly refused to swell the number of its undergraduates 
by lowering the requirements for its A.B. degree." 

222 



APPENDIX 

Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in his History of the 
College, has an admirable passage upon the Ratio 
Studiorum of the Jesuits. No layman in Amer- 
ica understood the subject better. I have often 
talked with him on educational questions, and re- 
call with profound admiration the depth and jus- 
tice of his views. He was my dearest and most 
intimate friend in New York, and when he died 
the American Catholic Church mourned its great- 
est historical scholar. I must find room here for 
an extract from his lucid remarks. 

{From Shed's ^''History of Georgetown College^'' p. 82 

et seq.) 

" THE RATIO STUDIORUM. 

" When the Society was restored, in 18 14, she could not of 
course regain everywhere, at a single bound, the pre-eminence 
she had formerly enjoyed in matters of teaching. The manner 
of her restoration was so different from the gradual organic 
development which had marked her original establishment, and 
the evils which she had to face, wrought during her period of 
death, by that general upturning of society called the French 
Revolution, were so formidable and so engrossing that she 
found but little of the scholarly leisure and repose necessary 
for the formation of ripe scholars and eminent teachers. 

** Yet in a very short time almost incredible advances were 
made, and when, in the year 1824, Leo XII. restored to the 
Jesuits their Roman College, they were able to provide it with 
professors in the various Faculties not unworthy of its ancient 
renown. 

" At the period of the foundation of the Society, a great 

223 



APPENDIX 

change was coming over the face of the civilized world. New 
ideas were taking root in the minds of men, the old systems 
were on the verge of decay, and even the great universities, 
which for centuries had been the creators and rulers of thought, 
were about to be swept away. The great founder of the So- 
ciety saw well that ideas can be combated only by ideas ; 
that education was the only weapon against the coming foe. 
He therefore instituted a body of teachers to mould and form 
the minds of the young. Time, however, is required to 
fashion a great idea into a working system, and it was not 
until many years after the death of St. Ignatius Loyola that 
the Ratio Studiorum came forth as a great organized system 
of education. . . . 

" In the year 1832 the Ratio Studiorum was thoroughly re- 
vised and adapted to modern requirements by a commission 
appointed by Father General John Roothaan, in virtue of a 
recommendation of the Twenty-first General Congregation, 
and this revision is now universally employed in the Society, 
so far as the circumstances prevailing in different countries 
admit of its application. 

** There are some faults for which the Jesuit system of disci- 
pline has no mercy, and in the first place is found the vice of 
impurity. For this crime the only punishment is expulsion, 
since contamination is looked upon as the greatest evil that 
can be spread amongst the young. Hence the virtue of purity 
is fostered with all possible care and solicitude, and even 
Protestants have borne witness to the high moral purity of 
Jesuit students. 

** With regard to the method of teaching to be observed, we 
cannot do better than to quote the words of a German Prot- 
estant who holds a prominent place in the work of modern 
education. Mr. Korner, in his ' History of Pedagogy,' thus 
writes of the Jesuits : * The Jesuits founded an educational 
system which was the best in its time, and soon won for 
itself well-merited fame throughout the world. It is the 

224 



APPENDIX 

fashion to represent the Jesuits as heartless beings, malicious, 
cunning, and deceitful, although it must be known perfectly- 
well that the crimes imputed to them are historically ground- 
less, and the suppression of the Order in the last century was 
due entirely to the tyrannical violence of Ministers of State. 
It is only our duty to justice to silence the folly of such as 
declare the Jesuit system of education to be nothing but fanat- 
ical malice, and a corruption of the young. The Jesuits were 
the first educators of their time. Protestants must with envy 
acknowledge the fruitfulness of their labors ; they made the 
study of the ancient classics a practical study, and training was 
with them as important as education. They were the first 
school-masters to apply psychological principles to education ; 
they did not teach according to abstract principles, but they 
trained the individual, developed his mental resources for the 
affairs of practical life, and so imparted to the educational 
system an important influence in social and political life. From 
that period, and from that system, scientific education takes 
its rise. The Jesuits succeeded in effecting a moral purity 
among their pupils which was unknown in other schools 
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.' 

'* The writer has well expressed the Jesuit system ; its end 
and object is to educate not merely in the limited sense in 
which that word is usually taken, to express simply the im- 
parting of information : training is the object to be sought for ; 
the mind must be disciplined, and, above all, the character 
must be formed. The axiom that knowledge is power is no 
doubt true, but it may be power for evil as well as for good. 
The principle running through the whole Jesuit system is that 
knowledge for its own sake is worthless ; and, indeed, this 
must seem evident, for it is only a knowledge used according 
to the dictates of right reason, and morality that can purify 
and elevate, and to purify and ennoble should be the end of 
all science. 

"The influence of this principle is seen in the paramount 
15 225 



APPENDIX 

importance given in the Jesuit plan to religious training. It 
could not be otherwise with a body devoted entirely to the 
service of religion and the Church. 

" Hence, also, those rules, recurring everywhere through- 
out the Ratio, which direct the teacher to aid his pupils as 
much by his prayers for them, and by the good example of a 
truly religious life, as by his formal instructions. He must 
give them exhortations from time to time, especially on the 
eves of great festivals. He must lead them to habits of prayer, 
to daily attendance at Mass, to examination of conscience, to 
the frequent and devout use of the Sacraments of Penance and 
the Eucharist. He must strive to induce them to practise par- 
ticular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, and to His 
Blessed Mother, and for this purpose Sodalities are instituted 
among the students. His influence must help them to shun 
vicious habits of every kind, and to practise virtues worthy 
of a Christian. The teacher must watch over the reading of 
his scholars, suggesting good books, and using every effort to 
deter them from the use of dangerous or licentious literature. 

" To the methods and spirit of the Ratio Studiorum 
Georgetown University has always been faithful, so far as 
the circumstances of time and place and available material in 
scholars and teachers would permit ; and in this fact is found 
the explanation of her great success, and of the exceptionally 
large proportion of her graduates who have attained distin- 
guished positions no less in literary and learned professions 
than in the practical management of affairs.'* 



926 



LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS 



His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons, Arch- 
bishop of Baltimore i copy. 

Kis Grace Michael Augustine Corrigan, Arch- 
bishop of New York i " 

Rev. John D. Whitney, S.J., President George- 
town College 500 copies. 

Rev. James J. Dougherty, D.D., New York, 

N. Y 20 

Boston College, Boston, Mass 10 

St. Joseph's College, Philadelphia, Pa 6 

Rev. Arthur T. Connolly, Boston, Mass. . . 5 

Gonzaga College, Washington, D. C 2 

Loyola College, Baltimore, Md 2 

The Novitiate, Frederick, Md 2 

Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass 2 

Rev. Richard L. Carne, Richmond, Va. ... i 
Rev. J. H. Sandaal, Athens, Pa i 



CO 



py- 



¥ ¥ ¥ 

Mr. Charles B. Kenny . . Pittsburgh, Pa. . . 
Mr. John Vinton Dahlgren New York, N. Y. . 
Mr. Charles A. Hoyt . . Brooklyn, N. Y. . 
Mr. Frank Rudd .... New York, N. Y. . 
Judge E. Boyd Faulkner . Martinsburg, W. Va 
Mr. Thomas E. Waggaman Washington, D. C. 
Mr. Wm. Michael Byrne . Wilmington, Del. 

227 



20 copies. 

20 

10 

10 

10 

10 

10 



LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS 



Judge Emile Rost .... 
Mr. Wm. V. McGrath, Jr. 
Mr. Anthony A. Hirst . . 
Mr. Robert J. Collier . . 
Mr. Charles N. Harris . . 
Commissioner J. W. Ross 
Mr. John P. O'Brien . . 
Mr. Henry S. Foote . . . 
Mr. Talmage A. Lambert . 
Judge George C. Merrick . 
Judge Martin F. Morris . 
Mr. Frank F. Palms . . . 
Mr. John W. McFadden . 
Mr. T. P. Kiernan . . . 
Mr. Thomas Walsh . . . 
Mr. Henry Major . . . . 
Mr. John J. a' Becket . . 
Mr. Andrew J. Shipman . 
Mr. John M. Ryan , . . 
Mr. Michael Gavin . . . 
Mr. E. D. O'Brien . . . 
Mr, Joseph Noonan . . . 
Mr. John Brisben Walker . 
Mr. John H. Walsh . . . 
Mr. H. W. Clagett . . . 
Judge Daniel B. Lucas . . 
Judge Robert Ray . . . . 

Mr. J. R. Ross 

Mr. Daniel A. Boone . . 
Mr. H. E. Mann . . . . 
Mr. Clement Manly . . . 
Mr. C. C. Magruder . . 
Dr. L. A. Kengla . , . . 



New Orleans, La. 
Philadelphia, Pa. 
Philadelphia, Pa. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
Washington, D. C 
New York, N. Y. 
San Francisco, Cal 
Washington, D. C 
Upper Marlboro, Md 
Washington, D. C 
Detroit, Mich. . 
Philadelphia, Pa. 
Utica, N. Y. . . 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
New York, N. Y. 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Rosaryville, Md. 
Charlestown, W. Va 
Monroe, La. . 
Baltimore, Md. 
Baltimore, Md. 
Baltimore, Md. 
Winston, N. C. 
Upper Marlboro, Md 
San Francisco, Cal. 
228 



6 


copies 




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LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS 

Mr. J. Smith Brennan . . Wilmington, Del. . . . i copy. 

Mr. J. J. Darlington . . . Washington, D. C. . . 

Dr. J. D. Morgan .... Washington, D. C. . . 

Dr. Daniel B. Clarke . . Washington, D. C. . . 

Mr. F. O. St. Clair . . . Washington, D. C. . . 

Mr. W. F. Byrns .... Washington, D. C. . . 

Mr. James H. Clarke . . Washington, D. C. . . 

Mr. Wilberforce Fames . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. N. Power New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Richard H. Clarke . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. John A. O'Brien . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Elijah Woodward . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Dr. J. T. O'Connor . . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Gustave Gumprecht . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Moritz Ellinger . . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. M. J. McKenna . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Sylvester L. H. Ward New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. James E. Duross . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Joseph H. Fargis . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Michael Griffin . . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. William Allen . . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Myles J. Tierney . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. M. W. Gaston Hawks New York, N. Y. . . 

Colonel E. C. Machen . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. John H. Nagle . . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Marcus J. McLoughlin New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. William H. Down . . New York, N. Y. '. . 

Mr. Bryan P. Henry . . . New York, N. Y. . . 

Mr. Fred'k W. Longfellow New York, N. Y. . . 

THE END 



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